


Veritas Vincit: The Fallen Rose

by NuriaSchnee



Series: Veritas Vincit Series [2]
Category: V for Vendetta - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Bombs, F/M, Fake Character Death, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Lack of Communication, Mental Health Issues, Minor Character Death, Near Death Experiences, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Revolution, Romance, Self-Esteem Issues, Sexual Content, Skin Issues, Suicidal Thoughts, Torture, Unreliable Narrator, V's Memories at Larkhill, Violence, just a bit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:06:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 25,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22755214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NuriaSchnee/pseuds/NuriaSchnee
Summary: Every story has two sides.V made a decision when he woke up under the rubble of the Parliament, returning from the doorstep of death: he decided to stay away from Evey for her sake and protect her from the shadows.However, an incident returned him to her, obliging him to face the fears and desires his heart harboured and the battle between the man and the persona inside his soul.
Relationships: Evey Hammond & V, Evey Hammond/V
Series: Veritas Vincit Series [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1628563
Comments: 4
Kudos: 20





	1. When everything is held by threat, how could I ever feel you?

The sky broke above me the very moment I stepped outside the building, rain falling over me, soaking my clothes and beading on the petals of the rose, tightly held in my hand. I couldn’t feel it. I couldn’t feel anything but an unmeasurable pain tearing my insides; the rest of me was completely numb.

One year ago, I woke up from death, covered in rubble and dust, feeling the bullets still in me, the explosion and its extinguished fire attacking my body. However, I moved, once I saw her face on my mind, her sweet eyes watering as she witnessed my last exhale. I crawled my way out of that mess, the ashes from where it had to born the revival of that country, a revival I prepared for two decades. But, at that moment, I was just thinking of her and her offer of going somewhere together. I held onto that hope, one I couldn’t even picture or give form to. I just felt it and it gave me force to stand up, to push aside rocks and walk. My mind was clouded and I wasn’t asking myself much. I was alive and she was somewhere. That was all I could process.

The night was about to vanish over my head when I reached the street. I dragged myself underground through a near sewage cover, falling on the dry floor of the conduit, gasping and grunting, shaken by the intense harm I was submitted to. I wanted to find her right away, although I couldn’t. Lying there, I tried to rationalize what had happened, only coming up with the certainness that I had survived miraculously and that it made no sense. Otherwise, maybe my system was that strong, to the point that not even an explosion of that magnitude could kill me. For a second, I thought that possibility was unfortunate until I realized that gave me the opportunity to see Evey once more, to return to her.

The hours healed me slowly and the clarity of mind wasn’t returning as fast as I wished. I had to extract the bullets out of my flesh in a very unorthodox way, the only one, considering I was in a sewer, harmed, and with nothing but my hands. My clothes were torn and burned and a cheek of my mask had cracked. It took me almost a day to stand up again, enough to walk for little bits, making my way through the underground.

I ended up at the Gallery, thinking she could be there. When I didn’t find her anywhere, in any of the rooms, I worried deeply. Since I had given her my home, I thought that maybe she would want it as her own. A mistaken assumption, definitely. Even so, it was hers to do whatever she wanted with it. There was no fixation in my gift.

Taking advantage of my visit to my now former home, I cleaned myself and changed my clothes. And I waited. I waited for her, turning the television on compulsively, although there was nothing to see since the country was collapsed and the emissions cut. When I couldn’t stand the uncertainty anymore, I walked out of the Gallery, to the upper world, forcing myself to move through the pain.

However, I didn’t succeed either. I tried not to fall on panic, knowing she was probably hiding somewhere safe. It took me almost two weeks to find where she was, right after localising Eric Finch. He visited her in an apartment near the suburbs of London and I approached one of the windows, trying to see inside. Soon, I caught the glimpse of they talking on a sofa. He made her laugh and approached to hug her. Smiling, she returned his embrace. My heart stopped for a second at the sight, the hard reminder hitting me: there was no place for me in her life.

I had thought so when she pleaded me to stay in that station, to go with her. I didn’t belong to that world anymore. I was just a shadow lurking, which had been left behind by Death, so despicable as I was that not even that relief had been conceded to me. Evey deserved to move forward and find happiness and freedom out of my obscure protection. My return would only compromise that chance. It had been foolish to have the hope that I could find a spot by her side, now I had been neglected by my own desires.

That night, I backed away from that window, immersing in the shadows, feeling I was leaving my heart there too, broken and cold over its sill, near her. I was used to the feeling of being an empty shell, although, it had reached another level of harm after meeting and losing her. I had to endure it once and, now, I realized it was time to do it again. I would have to learn to live with the memories that I had and the security that she would have a happy life from now on.

Although, I didn’t know what was left for me, with the purpose that freed me fulfilled and alone without her. I didn’t believe in coincidence and if the Ripper had left me there mercilessly, there had to be a reason. However, that night, sensing a hole in my chest, a desolation for walking away from a love that had been impossible since the first moment, I couldn’t find it.

Returning to the tunnels, trying to find some relieving in a known place, I sat on the edge of a station. The time passed slowly, all the images of Evey I had on my mind reproducing over and over again. I remembered the first time I saw her, so scared, trembling with a pepper spray in her hand, sitting on the cold floor of that alley. I could picture her perfectly, the strange shine in her eyes as she listened to my speech, utter confusion shoving over her. I could remember the feeling of her hand on mine as I helped her wake up, the heat and the slight tremble as she accepted it, the first unharming closeness I had for twenty years. I would never have thought, at that moment, that the rescue of that woman would change my life forever.

I was sure her will for me to live had deprived me of dying, but I couldn’t return to her. Since I dragged her into my life after saving me in the Jordan Tower, she had been wary. I was aware that she always felt like a prisoner around me. She never saw me as anything more than her captor. And I ended up proving her right after imprisoning and torturing her for weeks. If she had returned to me before the Fifth, conceding me the wish to see her again once, and tried to hold me back from my destiny, was just for compassion, for the goodness that formed her soul. I could never have my love returned by her after putting her through the horridness that constructed my being. I despised my actions. When she walked away from me that night, after getting out of the cell, my plan to help her to be free didn’t seem as worth it as my mindset had made me think. Losing her, being the object of her hate, was the most hurtful wound I had ever beard.

She had given life to the man behind the mask, something I had thought impossible. And she was the reason for my prolonged existence. Considering those things, I realized that, maybe, my mission now was assuring her wellbeing. She would be out there and I was sure danger wasn’t totally vanished. Remaining shadows could want to harm her, blaming her for the falling of the tyranny now I wasn’t around. If the only thing I had left was keeping her alive, even if from the dark, I would accept it gladly.

The next year, I proceeded under that idea. Soon after, Evey joined a rebel cell that formed right after the Fifth, moving out of the city to the main shelter from which they operated. However, she returned to London a few times during the week, visiting Eric Finch in his apartment. Those visits had a pattern and I knew the schedule by heart, knowing exactly when she would come over. Every time I followed her from the roofs and she entered his building, I returned to the abandoned flat I had nestled myself in. The Gallery wasn’t mine anymore and, even if I was aware that she hadn’t returned, I couldn’t get in as if it was. I had returned just once, assuring she was at the shelter, to pick up a couple of things I needed, which she wouldn’t miss if the day she returned there arrived. Somehow, it saddened me that she never did, but I could understand that that place had only unpleasant memories for her. For me, it was not only my former home, my concealing for decades; it was also the place where I had fallen in love with her, where every pleasant memory of her company was set.

As I expected, Evey moved on. She let her hair grow again and found a spot in that world for herself. She started a romantic relationship with Finch —to my great regret, although I disliked feeling that way— and worked on the revolution, helping and fighting along the rebels to take down the forces of the tyranny that still lurked around the city. She prepared herself for the toughness of her mission well, I realized, even if it took her some time.

After an incident with an ex-Fingerman who tried to attack her —a moment in which I almost showed myself in order to help, forgetting I was supposedly dead— I noticed a change. Her visits to London turned into more discrete ones, and less frequent. I never entered the shelter where she lived now, even if I approached there to investigate, knowing it was too difficult to do it and not get noticed, so I never knew what happened inside.

I suspected it, although, the next time I saw her at night, wandering around the streets of the city, accompanied by the other three heads of the rebel cell. They intercepted a van of supplies that I suspected was directed to someone of the opposition cell. It wasn’t hard for them to do it and then, for the first time, I saw Evey had learned how to fight and defend herself. Although, the great surprise for me came when she dragged and cornered the man that drove in an alley close from the place of the attack, and got something out of her belt: a knife. Concretely, one of my knives, that she pressed against his throat without any hint of fear in her.

After that, I always felt a pang of pride rushing over me every time I saw her strength. She participated in every riot and demonstration that was made and, sometimes, worked at night in that kind of missions. The power I had seen in her when we met was overflowing now, devoid of the fear that had held it back inside her. Those times, I felt conflicted with my former actions, feeling that, after all, it had been worth it, in a way, to become the object of her hate if that made her freer.

Even so, not everything I felt was pride in those moments. There was a worry too. She was fearless now, indeed, which seemed to have carried the consequence to have made her a bit careless too. I decided to participate in the riots as well, disguised, watching over her closer, after realizing she put herself in danger in her attempt to help as much as she could.

The situation in the country was worsening and I got the information of what the rebel cell was going through thanks to a couple from its organization, who had the bad habit to talk too much while returning home. I always took care that nobody else heard them since they weren’t. If that information leaked into the opposition cell, the revolution could be in serious danger. By the end of November, after a disastrous Fifth in which people had been attacked during a celebration, I heard them talking about a big riot approaching, which could be a blood bath.

I decided to participate in that one as well, concealing myself under a set of black clothes and a mountain mask, concealing my eyes under dark safety googles. I followed her closely while the demonstration lasted and helped to build the barrier of wheelie bins when the police forces arrived, keeping near where she was. Those moments evoked a strange feeling in me, sensing I was working along with the rebels and not alone as I was used to.

“Don’t step back until it’s necessary! There are minors and elders behind us and they need to get to safety when they load!” I heard Evey exclaim to the ones who were at the first line, backed on the barrier. “Contain and scape if they’re brutal! Remember: your lives are more important than this particular riot! We will not stop and we will do it again, but we need to be alive to keep fighting!”

The determination on her words reverberated intensely inside my body, making me feel a rush of emotion that only the idea of vengeance had evocated in me before meeting her. People had started calling her Lady Revolution and, honestly, there, encouraging the rebels and dressed to fight, she seemed its pure incarnation.

She looked above the barrier and a person right by her grabbed her sweatshirt, catching her attention, Evey looking at them right away. She crouched down to talk to who seemed one of her fellows, always near her during those events and spoke so softly to each other that not even my superior ear could overhear the conversation.

When the steps from the riot police were heard, she reacted fast, raising to glance above the bins again. She made a sign to the person by her side and they made an indication to us, let us know the moment to contain was arriving.

“Now!” Evey shouted.

We all backed against the barrier, the hit of the antiriot squad colliding against them instantly. We held the barrier all the time we could but, in the end, it wasn’t enough. Some wheelie bins were ignited once the police started to break the structure, giving time to the rebels to get out of the place. Everybody started to run and I followed, seeing how Evey did too.

I stopped on my tracks when I saw sideway how Evey diverted her trajectory to help a girl that had been hit by a foam ball. She made the girl stand on her feet and gave her to the person that had been by Evey’s side at the barrier. Then, she spun around, facing the antiriot squad, starting to run towards them.

My heart skipped a beat, the air leaving my lungs at a striking fear. My mind screamed danger and I was moving towards her as soon as I saw the shine of my former knives in her hands, ready to knock down whoever that crossed her path.

Never in that year, I had considered approaching her that much. Never, in my most desirous dreams, I thought I would lay my hands on her again. But Evey was being extremely thoughtless that day and I couldn’t let her risk her life before my eyes like that, sitting back and doing nothing. She knew how to defend herself, indeed, although not enough to fight back more than one antiriot police, in case they approached her at the same time. And she was running towards a bunch of them.

My hand captured her arm before I could realize. When she turned around, fixing a pair of furious, sharp eyes on me, I felt my grip around her arm burning.

“Don’t go there! It’s supremely dangerous!” I warned her, deepening my voice to transform it a bit.

“I know what I’m doing,” she snapped back, certain annoyance dyeing her features, but keeping her words gentle. “Just run and find a safe place to hide.”

She shook her arm, freeing herself of my grip, which I let loose, not wanting to hurt her. I was about to try to convince her verbally when I caught the glimpse of one man from the antiriot police at a few steps from us, his baton raised.

Grabbing her arm, I pulled her to me, moving in front of her, protecting Evey with my own body. Clenching my teeth, sensing a sudden hit of adrenaline, I stopped the hit of the baton with my forearm, pushing it away and hitting his neck with a fast movement of my hand. The man fell unconscious and I turned around to reach Evey immediately.

She made a brief move forward, not hesitating, not even before the scene she had witnessed, the intention to return to the front line clear in her eyes. No words would change her mind and I couldn’t let her get hurt that senselessly. I bent down, passing one of my arms behind her legs and the other behind her back. I grabbed her, lifting her up on my arms. I didn’t remember her being so light. It felt like carrying a bag of feathers, so delicate and pristine. Pure.

“Let me go!” Evey screeched furiously, wrestling to free herself from my grip as soon as I started to run towards the first safe place I spotted. “Did you hear me?!”

And stubborn. A stubborn, determinate bag of feathers. If only we weren’t in the middle of a battle, and I wasn’t dead to her eyes, and I wasn’t who I was… Maybe then I could rely on how much I had wanted her so close, to hold her just like that. Now, however, all that mattered for me was her safety. I had coped with swallowing down my feelings for a whole year, more or less. That wasn’t any different.

I ran to an alley, walking down a stairway that drove to a locked door, somewhere underground. There, I put her down, and she didn’t even wait a single second to try to return again, advancing towards the first step of the stairs. I moved as fast, blocking her way, barely breathing due to the sudden awful feeling that I was interfering too much, and in a contradictory manner.

Evey gave me a sharp look through her goggles, full of warning. “I have to go,” she snapped, no more using a gentle tone.

“You’d only get hurt senseless,” I argued, hoping she would recapacitate, realizing that such tactic was suicidal.

“It’s my decision to be there, to help,” Evey answered back, fully determinate.

Her words hit me deeply, leaving me powerless to argue more against her will. I had done enough. That was not my world anymore. I couldn’t interfere in her life as I was doing now. Watching over her among the shadows was one thing, but coming to her, speaking to her, even stopping her work… I had no right to do that.

I didn’t move. She did, walking away, returning. A broken sigh escaped me, my stomach stirring with anguish, the worry eating me even if I didn’t want to interfere. I followed her, promising myself to not stop her anymore, just fighting whoever that ran in her direction to harm her. I thought I could do that.

She turned around to look at me just for a brief moment when we got out of the alley. A second after, at the sound of a shot, Evey was again running to fight the injustice that covered all the street, antiriot police hitting the wounded who fled or the ones already on the floor, unable to run.

Evey fought them and I approached the place to do just the same, helping those on the floor if necessary. At some point, realizing Evey had gotten out of my sight, I searched her among the crowd.

When I spotted her, the world around me seemed to black out, falling into a void, broken in pieces. She was on the floor, with one antiriot police over her who hit her head, leaving her unconscious. He took her in his arms, disappearing through the broken barrier, away from the tumult.

I moved by pure instinct, fuelled by the image. I ran towards the barrier, scolding myself for having separated myself so much, for taken my vigilance away from her, even if for a second. However, I was too far, and too many antiriot police tried to fight me on my way there, delaying me. When I reached the barrier, noticing my heart beating with striking fear, my chest oppressed by the concern, I bumped into the man that had taken her away, face to face.

He had the kerchief that Evey had used to cover her mouth tied on his belt. A bolt seemed to land on my head at the sight, electrizing a feeling of blind anger inside me, making me move towards the man, leaving all rational thought behind.

I saw his brown gaze full of fear a second before I stormed against him, without thinking for a second, throwing both of us to the floor. I took off his helmet and hit him repeatedly, huffing, sensing as if fire escaped me through my ragged, furious breath. I gripped his waistcoat when his strength was totally consumed by my force, about to demand where she was.

A wave of pain on my leg stopped me, loosening my grip on the man, letting him collide against the floor. I growled, shaken by the pain, looking down at my right leg, bleeding through a pair of bullet wounds. Clenching my teeth, the cloud on my mind vanishing a little, I rose my gaze to my attacker, finding a red-haired young woman, who didn’t seem part of the antiriot police but dressed uniform as well. She shot me again with fury in her features when I moved to grip the man again, this time reaching my shoulder.

He took advantage of the brief moment of weakness that supposed me swallow the harm of the bullet, escaping. She helped him, dragging him through the barrier. I followed as soon as they started to escape, but the bullets on my leg delayed me, the pain blurring my gaze.

When I reached the vans, the one they got in started, accelerating when I was about to open the rear door to get in. I fell on the floor, left behind, gasping and trembling with desperation.

I tried to breathe in some calmness, to think straight, to not let the panic devour me. I had to find her. I would come up with a plan. However, my mind was racing and my whole body was shaking at my frightened state. No matter how fast I tried to think, to find a solution; thoughts escaped me as if water between my fingers were.

In my state, I couldn’t do a single thing, so I opted to return to the flat and take care of my wounds, getting out the bullets and stitching the holes. I made a tight bandage around them, deciding to get into the police department in order to find where she was. They had caught one of the visible faces of the revolution, the one who was considered my heir. There had to be a report for such detention, undoubtedly.

Breaking into such places and steal information was something I was very familiarised with. I had done it thousands of times during those two decades. When I slipped into the building that evening, when everybody was out, I thought it would be easy and fast to find where they had her.

When midnight arrived, contrarily, the only thing I knew with absolute certainty was that I was deeply scared and frustrated. Nothing I had done for hours had served me to find her. I had gone through the archives of the police, hacked them, revised everything… But there was nothing about Evey, aside from the old investigation from the past year. I couldn’t comprehend how that was possible, how something that had to be so simple was escaping me.

I ended up getting out of the building, knowing I wouldn’t find anything there. I was returning through the roofs, trying to think of something, to put the pieces of what I saw together. She had to be somewhere, detained, and couldn’t be a hidden place. I would have found it in the secret archives of the police if that was the case.

While squeezing my brain, I caught the sound of two familiar voices in an alley next to the building, and I approached the edge of the roof right away: the couple from the rebel organization. They stilled their tracks when she burst in tears and he hugged her.

“I can’t believe it…” She sobbed. “I can’t believe she’s dead.”

“I can’t either,” he hugged her tighter, sounding deeply mournful. “Those bastards…”

“What are we going to do now?” She cried. “What are we going to do without Evey?”

He grabbed her shoulder, backing her away gently. “Keep fighting,” he stated. “We can’t allow that her death turns to be in vain. We’ll give her an appropriate funeral and honour her, protecting this revolution.”

Whatever they said next, I didn’t hear it. My ears deafened. My legs failed me, my knees colliding against the floor of the roof, the hit reverberating all over my body. I felt all the air inside my system leave me, just as hollow dizziness sucked me in a void.

When I processed the information, the air seemed to want to return to my lungs again, but they were completely closed. I couldn’t breathe. My heart was out of control, my body falling apart with a strong tremble. I ripped my mask and wig off and, with it, I freed a sharp cry from my insides, breaking the silence of the night around me.

I had been tortured, burned by fire and showered in bullets, and I would have preferred going through that harm repeatedly than feel another second of that pain. A hole in my chest had been open, one I couldn’t stitch or heal. My heart had been uprooted from its place, dying along with the news that its owner was no longer alive. However, the rest of my mortal shell trembled at the pain, suffering in that now lifeless existence. It had been my fault.

My eyes dried eventually, unable to shed any more tears, and voice cracked, unable to utter another weep. When the sunlight started to enlighten the sky, I dragged myself to the flat, falling on the little couch as soon as I laid my eyes on it. For the rest of the day, I remained there, quiet, breathing in guilt and self-loathing, although I didn’t feel alive at all.

When the night fell again, I spend it searching for information about where the funeral would be. I decided to go, wait for it to pass and reunite myself with her after a year when the darkness of the night concealed our meeting. I would give her the farewell I didn’t dare to offer sooner and, then, I would find a way to end my own life, enough deadly to avoid my superior system to keep me there. I had no reason to stay, no will to exist now she was gone.

With a rose in my hand, covered by a cape and a hood, and the rain over me, I entered the cemetery, advancing through the graves, searching for hers. Eventually, I found it, deep inside the place. When I laid my eyes on the grave, the reality of the moment overwhelmed me. My gaze was staring at the letters, reading her name continuously, but the rest of me was starting to tremble, threatening with crumbling. I crouched down for a moment, leaving the rose before the tombstone.

Two years of emotions fell over me like a rock. Two years of having her presence in my life. And it all came at once, hitting me with the realisation that I would never see her lovely face again, not even in the distance. She was there, under my feet, buried. Dead.

Dead because I hadn’t been there, because I had been too careless. If I had insisted on her protection at the riot, she would be alive. If I had returned to her once I emerged from the doorstep of death, she would be. If I had accepted her offer, even if it was born from pity, she would be. If I had never crossed her path, she would be living a quiet, peaceful life right now.

It would have been easier for both of us, to have never met. I would be dead instead of her, just as I deserved and longed to be, and she would have had her freedom anyway, her release of fear without needing me to push her towards the edge in a cell. I had been her downfall, the path that had driven her towards the absolute dark, a path that just had suffering and tricks. And, for me, she had given me life. Evey gave me a piece of what living outside of hatred and madness was. I only failed her, hurt her, as an exchange for those gifts.

I was a demon. A devilish shadow that had lurked over her for two years. Not even my protection had been enough to save her from the influence that I had put above her person. So, I deserved that pain. I deserved more. Only someone like me deserved to lose the love of their life, to lose it all.

A sharp cry, a desperate one, escaped me, and I fell on my knees before the grave, pressing my hands against my damned mask. I mourned her loudly, weeping and hurting as I did. I bent over, my gloves digging in the fresh earth, the desperation to reach her making me tremble.

“I’m sorry,” I gasped between sobs. “I’m so, so sorry, Evey… Forgive me.”

I cried over her grave, wanting to die in that very moment, wanting to give my life for hers. It wasn’t fair that I had been the one to survive that war. She was the one who deserved to be free, to be happy. And I had been the reason why she hadn’t had any of those things. I didn’t want to live anymore. I didn’t want to believe she had died.

A soft step alerted me, making me swallow my cries and stand up right away. I had thought to be completely alone. I had assumed wrong. I held my breath, feeling I had my mind too obscured by my grief to think straight. Although I didn’t care much at that point if somebody saw me or noticed that I was a dead man walking. Soon, I wouldn’t be anymore. How ironical that I ended up perishing in a Shakespearean way.

“Who are you?” A known feminine voice asked me.

My whole body turned rigid at the sound, confusion striking me. For a moment, I thought I had died for real, that I had ascended to Heaven. That was not possible for me, and the image of the gloomy cemetery was still before my eyes.

“Who are you?” She asked again, sounding more demanding.

I sensed how my legs started to tremble, my hands to shake under the gloves. I had to be hallucinating. The pain had made me go definitely mad, at last. I wanted to turn around, to see her even if it was an illusion but didn’t dare, fearing there would be nothing behind me. I couldn’t bear even a trick of my own mind.

“Are you the man who tried to carry me to safety in the riot, a couple of days ago?” She changed her question.

That demand made me realize that I wasn’t having hallucinations. Evey was behind me, alive. The grave I was standing in was a fake one. Nobody was buried there. I didn’t know how, or why, or what all that meant; the only thing I was certain was that I had fallen on a trap. Everything had been a lie and I never felt so relieved to have fallen for one.

I heard a sound that she made, advancing towards me, “Answer me!” She inquired.

Feeling her hand about to reach me, my instinct of concealing reacted for me, avoiding her. I started to run towards where the exit of the cemetery was, holding my hood in place with a hand.

“Hey! Wait!” She shouted, starting to run behind me.

I had been a fool. I had witnessed strange things she and her fellows had been doing the last months. They seemed to be trying to catch a mole, not succeeding in their attempts. But maybe that wasn’t what they had been doing. Maybe I hadn’t been discrete enough. Maybe Evey had suspected somebody had been following her. And they had created a lie to attract her follower.

The energy returned to my body at the knowledge that she was alive. Every fibre of my being screamed to stop, to turn around and held her in my arms. I wished with all of me to be able to do that. But the primal instinct I had developed that year, the instinct of hiding from her, moved me through the panic of being caught.

I was so focused in fleeing that I didn’t notice another recently filled grave was on my way and, when I stepped on it, the fresh earth, softened by the rain, made me stumble slightly. At the very moment, another body collided against my back, and I hadn’t enough balance to avoid falling on the floor.

I sensed how Evey sat on my back immediately, gripping one of my arms violently, immobilising it behind me. Then, she placed something on my covered nape, and I didn’t have to sense it, or see it, to know it was one of my knives. I could have moved, pushing her away. It wouldn’t have been a problem for me. However, the power she radiated kept me down, my will to escape completely vanished.

“I’ll ask again. Who are you?” She demanded roughly, gasping for air, clearly annoyed.

Defeated, I rested the forehead of my mask on the fresh ground, closing my eyes and uttering a soft sigh. I couldn’t hide anymore. I didn’t want to escape from that moment, from feeling her furious and threatening above me. I needed to rely on the feeling of her legs trapping my body, her heat arriving to me, and her weight on my back. I felt the urge to cry from relief, suddenly forgetting about anything else. I would have preferred to trap her in my arms, but I accepted to be trapped by her, with a blade on my neck just as much. I couldn’t care. Her presence was everything now, the hole in my heart healing at every second that passed.

She pressed the blade harder against me when I didn’t answer.

“Nobody,” I spoke in a low voice, but not changing my natural tone again.

“That’s not a proper response,” Evey grunted, bothered.

“ _You asked my noble name, and I will tell it: my name is Nobody_ ,” I continued, furrowing at the delight of hearing the sound of her voice.

I sensed her tensing above me, her legs trapping me slightly harder, “I’m not in a mood for games, so answer my bloody questions,” she snapped, any patience totally gone. “Are you or are you not the man of the riot?”

“I am,” I admitted, feeling a bit of panic for answering that question that fast.

“Have you been following me all these past months?”

I had been right in assuming that had been the reason for that whole performance. In the end, I had fallen for my own tactic.

“Yes,” I whispered, a bit ashamed of myself.

“Why? Are you from the opposition cell?”

“No,” I answered right away, “I’m on the side of freedom.”

“Then you are from the organization.”

I furrowed, “No.”

“Liar,” she let out with venom in her voice. “There’s no way you knew about this if you’re not from the organization and any of them would reveal anything to anybody out of it.”

I pressed my lips on a thin line, realizing she thought that she had been followed by a mole indeed. She didn’t seem to suspect, not even for a second, that it was me all the time. If she had had a mole haunting her, another harming follower, I would have taken care of them.

“What do you want from me?” She demanded. “What are your intentions with all of this?”

“I just wanted to be sure you were safe,” I answered after a pause, opting to be completely honest.

“Curious thing coming from somebody who has been stalking me,” she blurted out, voice full of wariness. “There has to be more.”

“There isn’t.”

She moved over me and I felt the vibration of the floor when she stuck another knife on the ground, very close to my head. I held my breath, oppressed by the violence she showed, somehow paining my heart the lack of her usual sweetness. Another thing that was a fault of mine.

She pressed the blade on my neck harder against my cape, “You must tell me everything right now or I’ll cut your throat. That’s a promise,” she threatened me with a hard tone.

The time was over. I couldn’t conceal for more time. She had been more intelligent than me, and I couldn’t deny her the reality anymore.

“Take my life away, if you please. End me with your own hands. You’re in your absolute right,” I said, with all my honesty, feeling my heart beating accordingly to my words. “It’s been more yours than mine since long ago, Evey.”

She rose up on her feet, freeing me suddenly, backing away and taking the knife, dug on the earth, with her. I stood up too, dirty and completely soaked, and took off my hood, revealing my head, covered by my wig and mask. Then, I turned around, nervous and unsure, to look at her.

Evey was backed against the statue of an angel sitting, striking fear and disbelief in her features. She was completely soaked, her clothes clinging to her body and a few of her curls escaping the tie of her hair, falling over her face. I took a ragged breath, hit by a huge relief of seeing her, whole and alive. However, my image caused her a terrible fear, making her grab her already raised knives harder, and I tensed up.

Never in that whole year, I considered making her know I had survived. I had never imagined a moment in which we could reunite and I certainly didn’t know what to do, how to explain to her what she was seeing.

“You’re an impostor!” She assumed, shouting, her eyes filling with a bit of rage.

“Evey, I…” I started, wanting to assure her that wasn’t the case, but not knowing how.

“Who the hell are you?” She asked roughly, backing more against the statue.

My heart cracked at how utterly scared she seemed, a look in her eyes I thought I would never see again, not directed to me at least.

“It’s me: V,” I said in a soft voice, trying to soothe the situation. “I…”

Evey clenched her teeth, threat burning in her gaze. “V is dead!” She yelled, outraged, cutting me off again. “Bastard… How do you dare pass yourself off as him? Why are you doing this?”

“There’s an explanation…” I muttered, raising my hands a little, in a sign of peace, and advancing a single step in her direction.

Nevertheless, I kept completely still again, when her body grew completely tense and she grabbed the knives harder, ready to fight.

“I don’t know what you want, but you’re not going to get it,” she snapped, raising a knife before her, her gaze turning sharper, less fearful.

“I assure you this was not what I wanted,” I promised her, as soft in my tone as the hurt to see her so uptight inflicted me. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

She scanned me completely, not dropping her pose, “What are you talking about?”

I sighed, sensing my chest heavy at the realisation that she was right: I was an impostor. I had been an impostor for a whole year.

“Powder and fire should’ve been enough for me to end the circle, but Death didn’t greet me on her realm,” I explained her, memories of rubble and bullets burning on my head. “I was left behind on desolation.”

“It can’t be…” Evey muttered, her lips trembling, and her expression hardened, more rage raising to her features. “You’re an impostor! You’re a liar!”

Evey took a couple of fast strides, raising her knives, war on her face, and tried to attack me. I wasn’t prepared for that reaction, shaken by surprise, but I got to grab her arms before she stabbed me. She tried to free herself, yelling in absolute anger, still trying to attack me. I was breathless, witnessing how her eyes filled with tears of outrage, how she was so determinate to honour my memory against the idea of an impostor. My heart started to get out of control, admiring her features so close to mine, her spirit full of light and energy. I sensed my own tears gathering and I clenched my jaw to keep my emotions controlled, even if I just wanted to give in into the feeling of having her there, after two days of thinking her dead.

“Evey, please…” I implored softly. “Listen to my voice. Find the truth in it.”

“Shut up! You’re not going to fool me!” She yelled.

Evey tried to fight me again, trying to free herself from my fingers, keeping the knives away enough from my flesh. Then, her tears fell, mixing with the droplets caressing her skin.

“V died in my arms! I felt his heart stopping, his life slipping through my fingers!” She shouted, almost sobbing.

The pain in her words shook me, taking my breath away. I never asked myself if she had mourned me, just because I never thought I deserved it and the thought of that possibility displeased me greatly. I always hoped she didn’t carry my shadow, even after me being gone. That was the last thing I had ever wanted.

“I should’ve died, it’s true,” I muttered. “But it seems even my own death was beyond my power.”

She raged again, forcing my grip, trying to push the knives down. Something inside me shattered, a resilience I tried to maintain for two years. At that moment, I couldn’t help myself anymore.

I pushed her towards me, placing her arms around my neck, our bodies colliding, glueing together. I trembled, embracing her tightly, raising a gloved hand to cup her head, my fingers intertwining in her wet curls. I couldn’t breathe, but this time was due to her absolute closeness. I could feel her crazy heartbeats through our clothes, her chest pushing against mine as she breathed raggedly and the heat of her body. I could feel her life and it returned mine.

My tears fell behind the mask, concealed to her eyes. At that moment, I didn’t care about what would happen. I couldn’t think of her reaction to the truth or if she would decide to stab me in the end, still thinking I was an impostor. At that moment, I only thought of how much I had yearned to have her in my arms, how heavenly the feeling was. If I died in that very instant, I would die in peace.

I felt her relaxing against me. Right after, the knives made a soft sound when she let them go, both falling behind me, on the floor.

“V…” She muttered emotively.

I sighed, shaken by my name pronounced by her sweet voice, so full of glad disbelief. I hugged her tighter and felt as if I was in a dream when she encircled her arms around my neck, returning my embrace.

“How?” She asked in a soft whisper.

“I don’t even know myself. But, oh God… I thought you were dead,” I breathed out, trembling when she answered my broken words leaning a bit against my head, pressing herself a little bit closer of me, slightly.

“Evey!” A voice called her then, sounding far, but approaching.

I backed away, startled, recognizing the voice of Eric Finch, but didn’t let her go completely, keeping my hands in their place. I looked at her, about to ask for an explanation, but I found her hazel eyes fixed on me and all rational thought escaped me at the sight. She was glancing at me with pure confusion and relief. However, there was a warm emotion that made me tremble harder.

All of a sudden, her eyes rolled to the back of her head and her lids closed, her body collapsing completely.

“Evey!” I shouted, scared, holding her in time before she fell limp on the floor.

However, I had to throw myself down to catch her alright, backing her against one of my legs. Feeling a rush of blood making my body tingle with fear, I pushed aside the hair from her face and touched her neck, sensing her pulse even through my gloves. Her heart was still beating rapidly. I moved my hand to her chest, also moving, even if softly. She had passed out.

I heard Finch call her again and I knew I had to make a decision fast. I didn’t know if she had fainted just because of the shock or it was something else. I couldn’t leave her there, unconscious on the floor, under the rain. If I did so, he could take a long while to find her, considering the extension of the place. Also, I couldn’t vanish now. She had seen me, touched me. She knew I wasn’t a mirage and, after feeling how she had clung onto me, how she had said my name… I couldn’t leave as if nothing had happened.

I could take her to the flat, or to the Gallery, but I knew that was not her life anymore. She had a place where she lived, a home. I didn’t want to rip her off her atmosphere again. I wasn’t pleased by the idea of revealing myself to another person, although at that moment it didn’t matter much. The relief of having her alive, there, with me, made any other concern vanish.

Placing my arms around her better, I stood up, lifting her with me. I started to walk, catching the glimpse of a torches’ lights, directing myself in that direction. Soon, I was lighted up by the pair of lights, finding myself before Erich Finch and a girl, which I recognized to be the one that had shot me at the riot. Both stared at me with pure shock, stopping on their tracks.

“What the fuck,” the girl muttered.

There hadn’t been much time for explanations. After telling them Evey had fainted, another girl appeared, a brunette with two big blue eyes that panicked instantly at the sight of her friend. She pushed the situation forward, clearly understanding the events they had gone through that year with my presence there, finally putting a face to their “mole”. However, all that seemed to matter to her was taking Evey to a safe place. The red-haired girl argued about my presence, but the other stated that I had to come with them. Finch didn’t say a word. He just looked at me with absolute wariness.

I followed them to a van, where I laid Evey down on the back seats while the girls got on the front ones. I backed away, sitting on a corner at her feet, when Finch got on the rear part too, checking on Evey. He ignored me completely, not taking his eyes off her. I opted to keep my eyes closed most of the time, avoiding that image at all costs. I shouldn’t feel bothered, I knew that. Even so, my heart was divided. I was content that she was having a life, but I also envied Finch in a way. He had something I wished with my whole being to have. Something that was impossible.

When we arrived at the shelter out of the city, Eric lifted Evey in his arms and got out of the van. I followed, unsure, getting inside the building behind the two girls. They muttered something and the red-haired one turned to me with a cold look, while the other followed Finch upstairs. She made me follow her, taking me to the second floor, to a big room with red armchairs and a little office with glassy walls in a corner at the bottom of the place. After that, she ignored me completely, going to a table full of food and a teapot. Lost, I decided to back against a wall for a while, my clothes still completely soaked.

After a while, the brunette girl and Finch appeared. Between those walls with those persons, all of them looking at me with different levels of distrust and wariness, I felt completely trapped. The brunette girl got me out of the room, accompanying me to the ground floor, where they had a room full of washing machines. She gave me a pair of towels without saying anything and told me I could dry my clothes there. Without saying another thing, she closed the door with me inside, and I heard how she backed against it, not moving.

Breathing in, feeling my heart on my throat, I undressed and put my clothes on a dryer. I used the towels while the machine worked, glancing at the door continuously, the tension of being caught burning my nerves.

Those were the people Evey trusted, the ones that had been working tirelessly on the revolution. However, it was obvious that they didn’t trust me a single bit. In fact, there had to be more, as if there was a certain rage in their gazes towards me. I couldn’t help but ask myself the reason. Maybe Evey had trusted them enough to talk about what I did to her in the Gallery. Maybe they knew I had dragged her into that life, and that she didn’t come willingly. It would be reasonable, considering they worked together and I was sure that she had pushed unclarity from her life completely.

I felt relieved that the girl respected my privacy. When my clothes had dried, I dressed again and opened the door. She took me again to the room, asking me to sit somewhere, disappearing right away. Finch was sitting near the door, with a glass full of liquor. The red-haired girl was still near the table, drinking too. Completely ignored, I walked towards an armchair that was far enough from both of them and sat there.

The hours passed slowly and I was growing really tense and uncomfortable. It wasn’t because of the feeling of their constant glare or the unknown place. It wasn’t either because I felt revealed or caught. All I could think of was that the time went on, the night turned into morning, and the morning was almost evening, and I didn’t know what I would do when she appeared.

The brunette girl had returned a couple of times, saying something to them and then disappearing again. The room was so silent that it hadn’t been hard for my perfected ears to catch what she said. Apparently, Evey was still asleep, but nothing bad was happening to her. She had just caught a bit of cold and the shock had got the better of her. However, I knew at some point she would wake up and would come to search me.

Then, when that moment arrived, I didn’t know what to do. For a whole year, I had maintained myself apart. I wanted to keep her new world clean of my person, so she could be free from the darkness I had put her through. I could never love her and I thought that would be the only thing I could ever do for her, in regard to the love I felt. I was a monster. We both knew that. I renounced to her because it was the right thing to do, to free her from me.

But now she knew I was still alive, and here. I was again in her life, somehow, and it was terrifying. I knew she wouldn’t let pass the fact that I had told her no more secrets or lies and then omitted the truth of my salvation for a year. It hadn’t been a lie per se, but I suspected she would see it like that.

While I wondered what I would receive from her, if hate or sadness, I waited. When the midday arrived, the door of the room opened again. I turned to see who had entered and my heart collided against my chest painfully at the sight of Evey. Finch stood up at the very moment, hugging her, and the red-haired girl made her way to Evey too, crossing the room from the table.

“Thank God you’re alright,” Finch said, full of worry, backing away from her a little. “How do you feel?”

“I’m alright,” she assured with a soft tone.

“Are you sure?”

She nodded and the red-haired girl collided against her without any carefulness. Evey made a face as her friend rubbed her head against her, creating a slightly comical picture.

“You silly girl!” She screeched. “You had us scared to death!”

“Please, Maria,” Evey muttered, trying to free herself from her arms gently. “You’re asphyxiating me.”

The brunette grabbed the other girl’s arms, taking them away from Evey. I turned my head around again, fixing it before me, feeling my body cooling with nerves and my mouth drying.

“You don’t have to deal with this now,” I heard Finch say in a low voice.

“It’s better like this, while I can,” Evey answered, as softly.

I clenched my jaw, breathing in, hit by her words, not knowing what that meant exactly. When I heard the first step that she made towards me, my heart skipped a beat and my body grew tense.

Evey walked slowly and, eventually, she reached where I was. I kept my gaze down, too nervous to look at her, although I died to contemplate her lovely image for a whole life.

She kept quiet and I felt as if I was about to die in pure nervousness. Swallowing down my feelings, I masked my worry under politeness.

“How do you feel, Evey?” I muttered.

“A little weak, but confused mostly,” she answered with a steady voice.

“I understand.”

I was out of words and I didn’t trust my voice much. I closed my eyes hard for a moment, trying to keep myself controlled. I felt silly for being so uneasy.

“May we talk on a more private place?” She asked.

Her words fell over me like a bomb, reverberating inside my already shaken nerves. I gave her a nod, standing up, and she turned around right away, starting to walk toward the door. I followed, leaving a prudent distance between us.

When we reached the door, the brunette girl gave her a gaze full of concern, “Hurry. Nobody can know about him. It’d be a real mess if somebody saw him,” she warned her in a low voice.

Evey nodded and I felt even more distressed. The last thing I wanted now was causing her more trouble.

She opened the door, waiting for me, and I crossed the doorstep, obliging. Evey walked down the corridor, until we reached the stairway at the end, walking upstairs to the third floor. That hall had fewer doors. Evey opened one that was in the very middle, letting me enter the room.

It was a modest bedroom, with a double bed, a closet and a full-body mirror in a corner. The faint light of the cloudy evening entered by the only window there, giving the room a sorrowful aspect.

Evey closed behind her, staring at me with an empty expression in her eyes. Sensing the storm coming, I just waited, not being able to breathe. Suddenly, she crossed the distance between us. For me, it would have made more sense that she tried to hit me but, contrarily, I found myself captured in a tight embrace. The collision, the unreality of the moment, displaced me for a second. However, when I sensed her little body trembling and a sob ripped from her voice, my arms wrapped around her by instinct, holding her close. Evey gripped the fabric of my shirt, clinging onto my clothing desperately as she pressed her head against my chest. One second after, she escalated, crying, her hands tightening on their grip, even more, her arms trembling around me.

“Evey…” I mumbled her name in a low voice, completely lost by her reaction.

“I can’t believe you are here… I can’t believe you’re alive…” She wept brokenly against me.

Her words stabbed my heart deeply, feeding my confusion. She cried in my arms, relief radiating through her tears. I held her, unable to do anything else, to say anything else. I never expected that reaction. Last night, she seemed relieved indeed, but there wasn’t that desperation that she was showing now. And I couldn’t comprehend why.

She pulled away eventually, just a little, drying her face with the sleeves of her sweater, sniffling. I kept my arms on her shoulders, unsure, just in case her body failed her once more. I clenched my jaw at her expression, a profound wound in her soul shining in her eyes.

“How?” She fumbled for words, with a broken voice, seeming utterly confused. “You were dead… I made sure you were. I checked your pulse and your breathing several times to be sure… I put you on the train… And...”

Her voice died and I felt my blood freezing, not being able to believe that she had checked if I was alive that much. She was an angel, for sure. Just a soul so pure could care that much if a broken life like mine lived or vanished. Just somebody like her could be so glad to see me alive.

“I’d like to offer you a better explanation, but my only memory, after supposedly dying, is waking up under the rubble, when the fire had extinguished,” I excused myself after uttering a sigh, sensing a pang of guilt. “It took me hours to get out of there and, somehow, I did. That’s all I know for sure. How I survived… That’s beyond my comprehension.”

Before my words, Evey was shaken by a sudden panic. Her pupils shrunk in an alarming way, turning her eyes into a pair of hazel ponds shinning under a horrified expression.

She covered her mouth with her hands, “Oh God, V… I put you on that train alive…” Evey said in the lowest voice I had ever heard from her, seeming as if she was falling inside a void of terror.

Shaken by the guilt increasing in her features, feeling a rush of adrenaline that drove me to stop it immediately, I rose my hands to her wrists, capturing them with all the gentleness I could extract from my nervousness.

I uncovered her, taking her hands away from her mouth, furrowing sadly. “Do not feel guilty, Evey,” I assured her vehemently. “There was no way you could’ve known I was.”

Evey seemed to calm a bit at my words, her panic falling away some. She stared at me for a few silent seconds, changing the terror for unsureness.

“So… You didn’t do it on purpose,” she declared, although it had a slight ring of question. “You didn’t fake it.”

I furrowed deeply behind the mask, examining her, trying to find the meaning of that reasoning.

“Of course not, Evey,” I answered right away, frightened by her assumption. “Why would I?”

“I don’t know…” She muttered softly, avoiding my gaze, uneasiness radiating through her.

A harsh burn attacked my eyes and lungs, the threaten of dry sorrow, and I took my hands away from her. It shouldn’t have been a surprise, that she doubted my person. She fulfilled my wish when she returned before the Fifth, which didn’t mean she trusted me. Added to that, the fact that I had undoubtedly lied to her letting her thinking me dead, was another understandable reason for her to be wary.

When I also made a step backwards, putting a brief distance between us, she snapped her head up.

“I will not blame you if you mistrust my words,” I said, resigning to that truth. “I have no right to ask for anything yours, after all.”

She put her arms around her, embracing herself, a cold sadness reaching her expression. “I just don’t understand… After what you said to me…” She muttered sorrowfully. “Why didn’t you come back to me then? I told you we could’ve gone somewhere together… I would have.”

Air left my lungs at the memory, at the offering that the goodness in her made her utter. I dropped my gaze, feeling unable to keep my eyes on hers. “There was no place for me in the new world that awoke the next day;” I started, still maintaining that idea, the one that had driven me to hide, “therefore, neither in your life. You deserved the light of a new life, not being chased by the shadow I am. I had provided enough darkness to you. There was no need for more. I was unwilling to break that for a selfish desire.”

That was true. During that year, since I made the decision to keep myself away from her, I never thought of appearing again. Although, in my dreams, I always reached for her. In the oneirism of the night, I could let myself unleash the desire that moved my heart, the wish of being with her. However, in the daylight, I had stayed strong on the idea of following my reason, to keep the darkness of my being away from her new life. I revoked the idea of being any more selfish towards her. I thought that I had received already more than I deserved.

Evey gave me a stare full of hurt and furious outrage, making a rush of electricity shake my system, leaving me more lost even at the situation I was living. “Yes, you’re right,” she stated with fury, advancing a step towards me, threat in her gaze. “You were… You are a shadow. God…” She grunted, huffing. “Did you really follow me, for real?”

My head spun a bit at her sudden rage, making me feel cornered in that little room. I had nowhere to hide, nothing to put between us as a protection. Seeing her gaze, I suspected that she would try to hit me this time for real.

“I know how much you’ve watched over me… I sensed it every damn time you had your eyes on me,” she continued, even angrier. “So, it’s impossible you didn’t know how much I’ve mourned you, how much I’ve cried over your death. I’ve been grieving for a whole year, V. A whole year,” Evey stated, raising her voice a little, a storm growing in her expression, all directed to me. “And you didn’t think that maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t the best decision to let me think you were gone for good? That maybe I wanted you to return as much as you did?”

The shower of her furious words hit my core, freezing my body, leaving me breathless and powerless before the reality she was exposing. My mind, even if her explanation radiated pure truth, couldn’t accept that she had pained my absence for a whole year, that she even claimed to have wanted me back that desperately.

“I didn’t know,” I wrestled with saying something, my voice seeming almost totally gone. “I couldn’t imag…”

She clenched her jaw, furiously. “Don’t lie to me,” she stated, shutting me off harshly.

“I’m not,” I mumbled, feeling pathetic, still trying to process her words. “I just followed you while you were out, to make sure you were safe. I didn’t invade your privacy.”

The fire grew in her pupils. “Really?” She blurted out. “And what about the reunions inside the shelters? You’ve been inside them, somehow; don’t dare to lie. There’s no other way you’ve known about the trap.”

I felt a void opening under my feet, a feeling of desperation I couldn’t contain. Those two days I had been feeling everything was getting out of my control, like never before.

“I wasn’t there. I got the information by listening to a couple of your organization that talk too much on the streets,” I tried to explain myself. “As I’ve said, I didn’t want to invade your privacy.”

“Anyway,” she shook her head, furrowing as if dismissing my explanation. “What makes you think I needed protection? I can protect myself, as you’ve seen,” Evey exposed, furious. “If you hadn’t had the guts to emerge from the shadows, you didn’t have the right to watch for my security.”

After throwing these truthful and hurtful words at me, she gave me her back, turning around and stepping away from me, putting a cold distance between us. She rubbed her forehead with her delicate fingertips, her back looking extremely tense. I contemplated that image of exasperation, with a feeling of being powerless I hadn’t had in a long time.

“I just can’t believe you decided for me...” She muttered in a low voice, keeping her back turned to me. “You didn’t let me chose if I wanted you in my life or I didn’t. I’d have given everything to see you again one more time, you know?”

My body lost force under the theatrics that covered me, deflating. She couldn’t see that the burn on my features was increasing, the edge of my eyes watering as the realization of what I had done was growing inside me, poisoning roots attaching inside my flesh.

“I wished so hard to hear your voice, to cook and dance and read together…” She muttered sadly, lamenting. “I’d have preferred the shadows, as you say, over this light that’s my new life,” Evey turned around, fixing her gaze full of hurt and dejection, also filling with incipient tears. “This new life has had more shadows than if you had stayed. I thought so, at least… But you’re always making decisions for me. You’re always doing what you please with me, to the point I don’t know what’s true with you.”

I wished the void increasing under my feet swallowed me whole. I couldn’t stand the way she was looking at me, so disappointed and hurt. I thought nothing could be worse than the hate she professed when she got out of the cell, discovering it had been me all along. The sadness of the neglect, the hurt of realizing I had dishonoured my word of truth, was worse. I could live with hate. I knew I deserved it. I accepted it. Nevertheless, disappointment meant attachment, and that was something I never thought Evey could feel towards me.

I crossed my arms over my chest, trying to keep collected, to keep my heart in its place, tilting my head to a side to take my eyes away from her outrage. “I could’ve never imagined you’d be so attached to my memory. After what happened… After you left… There was no way you could want me near,” I explained in a low voice, being totally honest.

“What the…?” She breathed out, raging. “I came back! I told you I’d go anywhere with you and I even kissed you! How could you think such a thing?”

My heart was starting to hurt due to the dizziness seizing me now. Those memories, the ones of the night she returned to me, right before dying, were the most precious I had, but the most painful too. I was thankful for that night, for everything she gifted me, even if from pity. But pity was not enough.

“You fulfilled the last wish of a damned man. It was more than I deserved, surely,” I muttered brokenly.

“You’re doing it again! You focus what you think on me as if it is what I think too. And then you decide on your own!” She grunted, full of clean fury. “I returned willingly! I meant everything I did and said that day! It’s so stupid… It’s so stupid that’s not credible! You’re just making me feel lied and manipulated...”

Those words set my panic on fire, making me raise my head again, returning my gaze to her. “That’s not my intention at all,” I stated with firmness.

“Sure! Like it wouldn’t be the first time…” Evey grunted, shaking with outrage, fight inside her eyes. “You built up a whole jail and tortured me without hesitation for weeks to make me think I had been captured for real. That’s pretty manipulative, let me say.”

She demolished my whole being with those venomous sentences, shattering the last of the resilience I had. My legs kept me standing, but a hole had been reopened in the middle of my chest, making me shrug forward, trembling with pain.

Evey dried her tears as I fell apart, as I wished to die mercilessly as the monster I was. I hated that she had mourned me. I hated to think the mistake of showing up in her life again was paining her that much. Although, all that was just fuelling my reasoning, even more, making me think I was right in assuming I was no good for her. Alive or dead, I was just causing her pain. Either my memory or my physical presence was haunting.

She breathed in raggedly, sniffling a little, “I don’t know what to think of you anymore, V. Of us. I’ve forgiven all the pain you caused me in the past, telling myself you couldn’t help the way you were and what had been done to you. Damn…” She whispered, sounding terribly broken. “I’ve even forgiven I was always under your agenda and that you preferred your vengeance over me. I’d have understood it if you hadn’t had another thing, another option, but… You said you were in love with me and, after all, you survived and didn’t return to me.”

I lost almost all the energy I had. I just stayed there, standing, although I felt barely alive. I was just a hollow statue filled with loathing towards myself. I couldn’t move, just hear her explain how much I had hurt her feelings, and hope my atoms to vanish in the air at some point. I closed my eyes hard, trying to enclose myself even more.

“You’re still fighting in the shadows, maybe not because of your vengeance anymore, but you’re there. And I’m still under that,” she continued. “You had to think I was dead to show up. Either way, I know you would’ve left me thinking you died that day, on my arms, after confessing, for the rest of my life,” Evey stated, full of disbelief. “If you had returned and we had this very conversation a year ago, and you told me you didn’t want to be in my life anymore, for whatever reason, I’d have accepted it. I wouldn’t have asked you to change your priorities for me. I won’t do now, either. I just can’t bear the fact that you let me suffer thinking you were dead… I thought you cared about me, at least enough to have that minimum amount of sincerity.”

Of course I cared about her. It was the only reason that kept me away because I cared for her well-being and I was the opposite of that. However, now, I didn’t know if I had been completely reasoned about my decision. The line between how much pain I could have exposed returning or staying away was too blurred at that moment. Every way seemed the wrong path.

She let out a tired sigh and I felt my heart beating even more accelerated, sensing a coldness between us that went beyond any other hard moment we had lived together.

“Maybe you let me out of that cell, V, but you haven’t ceased torturing me.”

The tears I had been holding back fell finally, finding their way down my scarred face. She would never know. She would never be aware that nothing, any words she had directed to me, had been that hurtful. The hole in my heart opened more, ripping the last trace of strength I had.

I clenched my jaw, avoiding my urge to cry loudly, sensing my whole body burning internally with the fire of guilt. Hopeless, I observed the reddish face of the woman I desperately loved, completely broken because I was unable to do anything without hurting her. I could have acted differently. I could have given her the truth and then walk away. At least, like that, I could have saved her so much suffering. Maybe I was just a coward.

“I’d never have stayed away if I had known you were in such pain,” I whispered, not daring to raise my voice much, just in case the rivers unleashed under the mask were noticeable. I refused to make her any guilty for my state.

“Don’t be oblivious. You’re more intelligent than that,” she mumbled, sounding defeated. “It’s not only the fact that you’ve stayed away, but that you think your judgment is better than mine. I can’t compete with your own mind. You might be cleverer for plotting and destruction, but with this, with me, you’re short-sighted.”

“I’m not,” I argued softly, although I feared she had a stronger point than I dared to admit. “I just…” I furrowed, trying to find the words. “Couldn’t do that to you. I couldn’t condemn you like that. My life is a hell where I don’t want to drag you in.”

She glared at me with a furious passion that took my breath away, sinking my body into the sensation that two hands had pushed me against an invisible wall right behind me, my body colliding painfully against its surface. She crossed the brief distance that separated us, facing me without a hint of mercy in her expression. Inside her eyes, there was just pain. Storming pain.

“Short-sighted and stupid!” She yelled, making me feel very little. “I wanted you, V, do you hear me? I wanted you! I wanted you so much it tore me apart every time I thought I didn’t fight enough to make you stay. I wanted to have a life by your side, at the Gallery, and bring you all the things you hadn’t had! I’d have burned in your hell rather than live without you. You think I’m so stupid I don’t realise what you have inside? I know your broken in some ways. Everybody is, somehow. I didn’t care then. What I can’t bear is that you’re unable to let me decide. The only valid explanation for your actions is that you didn’t want me back. Can you say that? Can you say you didn’t want me?”

I tried to put a bit of space between us again, giving a little step backwards, sensing my body would crumble at any moment under her force. I felt almost completely defeated and I had no strength anymore to lie. I couldn’t.

“I did, Evey,” I whispered, closing my eyes for a moment, holding back a sob that threatened to escape my throat. “And I did not lie in my last words. But you left for months and I assumed you moved on, before and after the Fifth. I couldn’t comprehend that you thought of me and my petition, and even if you gave me your compassion I…”

“Stop it!” She yelled brokenly, bursting in tears again, making me flinch. “It wasn’t compassion, for goodness’s sake! I loved you! I loved you with all of my heart! You don’t listen to a single thing I say… And you let me suffer! You always let me suffer… But now it’s too late. I’m too broken. We have to end this circle. It has to end… It has to…”

If I still had a soul at that moment, it left my body completely after she pronounced those words. My lungs refused to breathe more and I felt the rest of me would riot as well at any second, shattering into pieces as if I was made of the most fragile glass. All I could do was cry in silence, stay, wait for her to end me definitely, realizing I had lost that battle before even beginning it. I had killed her feelings for me before they could blossom. There was nothing in her for me now. It was already over.

“I can’t do this anymore,” she lamented, softening her tone a bit. “I’m glad you’re alive. Even now, after all, I’m utterly glad. But I’m not strong enough to cope with all you’ve done to me, what you’ve let me believe and the barrier you’ve put between us. I’ll go mad because of confusion and sorrow if I try, never knowing which is my place or what is true, and… I just can’t. So, free me, V; I beg you. Free me from all of this and say goodbye to me, this time for real. Have your home and all that is yours back and… Please… No more following. No more intervening. Just get out of my life; you owe me at least this.”

I closed my eyes tight, letting the tears that didn’t stop gathering fall with hardness, keeping my voice concealed at all costs. I had the urge to beg for mercy, to say how much I regretted having hurt her so deeply with my actions. However, I couldn’t. All I had the right to do, what I was obliged to, was giving her freedom from my shadow definitely. She deserved it, indeed, and I deserved to drag myself into the obscurity again, swallow those consequences until, if I had any luck, my heart stopped.

“I’ll do as you wish. You have my word,” I muttered, keeping my head down, but raising my blurry gaze to look at her for the last time.

Then, I bowed over slightly, knowing well I was leaving there my broken heart and my damned soul, at her feet. I didn’t need them anymore.

“Goodbye, Evey,” was the last thing I said, before walking to the door and getting out of the room.

I got out of the building right away, descending by the first window I found at the end of the hall. Once in the fields, I started to walk away from the shelter, sensing the numbness increasing in my being.

A few minutes later, the numb state broke, a wave of realization, of comprehension of the events crushed me, and I ripped my mask off, trembling, crying out loud at last. My body crumbled, obliging me to kneel down, immersing in the high grass around me. I bent over, sensing the hole in my chest bleeding openly, tearing my whole existence.

I had nothing left.

It was completely over for me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go! <3
> 
> I'm so glad to start V's POV at last. Because... Why suffer once when you can suffer twice and go through all the angst again? But, really, his mind is too interesting to leave it aside from this story and maybe I can include some scenes that didn't match in Veritas Vincit but that have more meaning for V.
> 
> I hope you enjoy this! <3 Next chapter will be posted on the 29th of February. For those who come from Veritas Vincit, the next chapter will be posted next week, between Saturday and Sunday.
> 
> Find the playlists of Veritas Vincit here: [Evey's Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3Ul5sOjU0TKuQCAkKXHzeS?si=aX08S8aJRqOyXRhszGJ10g) and [V's Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1VjVNFmfETIpehoTINYsfD?si=tm0JDqvIR9ysfZcIBi3I6w). Also, you can find me on [Tumblr](https://nuryrune.tumblr.com/)! 
> 
> See you soon! <3


	2. Now it chills me to the bone; how do I get you alone?

I barely felt the coldness that welcomed me when I opened the Shadow Gallery’s door. The dusty essence lingering in the air encircled me. I didn’t feel it. I closed myself inside, turned the light on and immersed myself in with dragged steps. Everything was exactly as I left it, just covered by a thin layer of dust. When I reached the sofa, I sensed my whole body deflating, losing all energy, and I let myself fall on it. I laid down, not minding the dust, and took off my mask and wig, leaving them on the floor without contemplation.

The dullness devouring my heart made any will to move from that spot vanish. Nevertheless, the time passed, and slowly the dullness was consumed by the pain revived by my mind, constantly going through memories. Her face full of tears haunted me, the ghost of her embraces and her fury colliding inside me, and I escalated. All I could do for hours was cry, hoping to die and get swallowed by that sorrow that tore me.

My mind was unable to process how I had been able to mess everything up to that extent. Every time I had seen her, she seemed quite alright. I would never have thought she was mourning me. And the worst was that a part of me knew that, even if I had known, maybe I wouldn’t have shown myself either. However, I would never have thought that stronger feelings harboured her soul.

The echo of her voice saying that she had loved me vibrated continuously inside my head, poisoning what was left of my existence. When that had happened, I couldn’t know. Why, I couldn’t understand. It didn’t matter now. Anything good that she felt towards me at some point, had vanished now. And I had been the one who had destroyed it.

I couldn’t stop thinking about what could have happened if I had returned to her after the Fifth. I couldn’t stop wondering if she would have received me with those feelings that I had known nothing of. However, I stopped myself soon on this train of thought, remembering who I was and why I decided to stay away.

I was the one who had tortured and failed the only person I cared about, my only love. She deserved to move on, definitely after knowing the truth. Evey would stop mourning me and turn that page of her life for good. She was free, at last. Whatever that had passed unnoticed before my eyes during that year didn’t matter anymore. Whatever she had felt for me had rotted. And it was better that way.

I always had forbidden myself to cherish any hope. I tried to contain my hurtful dreams whenever they turned too delightful. Just because I loved her, I couldn’t expect anything from it. Nothing could bloom out of it, so I was destined to that eternal loneliness. Maybe my death had softened her feelings towards me, her compassion being that great. Maybe that was why she started to feel more attached to my memory after my departure. In my dreams, the most selfish ones, I had imagined her by my side a million times, saying those words. Even if totally aware that that would never happen, I always thought that those words would make me sense the happiness I had never been able to reach. However, in reality, they had pained as if a burning iron had gone through my chest.

When I sensed my body was completely dry, the emptiness fell on me again, the crushing silence of the Gallery weighing on me. I had nothing left, nothing that linked me to that life. I thought of staying there, still, until my being perished. At that moment, I couldn’t wish anything else for myself. I felt nothing else was inside me. Nothing had been left behind.

I thought of a million ways to disappear and every time I found a new possibility a voice inside my head seemed to scream, scolding me. I couldn’t spot what it was exactly, but I could sense the feeling that it wasn’t my time to leave yet. And that was even more exasperating, considering how much I wanted to.

She had asked me to disappear, to stay away, and I would accomplish my promise at all costs. I would do no more harm to her. I couldn’t. I preferred to suffer eternally in Hell before hurting her again.

Finally, between rambling wonders, I understood why a part of me refused the idea of dying. There was danger still, out there, waiting to attack the popular power raising. Evey was in the core of that and had taken her duty to heart, to the point she had turned a bit careless about her own life.

I couldn’t interfere in that, now not even from afar, but the thought of her being harmed unsettled me deeply. I couldn’t watch over her actions; however, I could help without being present in the shadows around her. I could continue being a vigilante and, in case I found something, make it arrive to her organization without being there directly.

Maybe it was still intrusive. Maybe it was cracking my oath a bit. Nonetheless, I couldn’t relegate myself to die, not before I was completely sure she was out of danger. If the day came when the country was completely free and Evey was too, maybe then I could find a way to rest.

Coming to that conclusion, I stood up from that spot, starting to clean the Gallery and prepare myself for that new resolution.

It wasn’t until almost a month and a half later that I found something. I had gone out at night, just as I usually did, and took advantage of it to get a few supplies. Then, I heard something from the rooftop I was crossing. I wouldn’t have stopped if not because I caught a few suspicious words, obliging me to approach the edge and listen carefully. The voices belonged undoubtfully to two men, talking so softly nobody could hear them. Nevertheless, my sensitive senses caught every word they said.

The first two minutes, everything they said wasn’t new for me. The existence of an opposition cell and their plans to return to power was a certainty I had been aware of for months. Those men seemed just a couple more of its minions, probably ex-Fingermen, that wandered around constantly. What caught my attention and activated my sense of fight came after.

They mentioned an attack the opposition cell was planning against the population, to put some fear into its core, and, hopefully, attract the rebel cell and destroy them. They didn’t specify much on how the attack would be, but talked about explosives. Then, one told the other their provider would be waiting to talk about prices in a party set for New Year’s Eve, in a mansion near the centre. After they agreed that one minion would be there to meet the provider, they parted ways, disappearing into the night.

If I had been in a different situation, in any other time, with any other feelings harbouring my chest, I would have jumped off the roof and followed that trace. Nevertheless, that was my reality now. Eventually, after the furtive meeting ended, I moved, returning to the Gallery in silence. That wasn’t my mission anymore.

However, as I advanced through the dark rails, I regretted deeply not trying to get more information. I wasn’t sure if the rebel cell was aware of the attack planned against them and the population. If they weren’t, it was a great danger they had over their heads. All of a sudden, I was taken by a growing fear for Evey and oppressed by an enormous dichotomy.

I had promised not to intervene in her life and I wasn’t willing to break that oath. There had to be a way to help her, although. If I hadn’t known anything about the attack, I would have kept entombed in my home. But I knew the danger approaching and I was unable to still my nerves when thinking about the consequences of her ignoring it.

When New Year’s Eve arrived, very aware of the risk I was taking, I dressed with the crimson theatrics I had prepared for the occasion, dancing between the robes of a prince and a musketeer: a long shirt with two lines of golden buttons and shoulders, with a long cape and loose fit trousers. I put on a brunette wig, slightly shorter than usual, a whole-face red Venetian mask with touches of gold, and topped the costume with a musketeer hat with a golden feather attached.

For almost two weeks, I had been investigating, with poor success, to my dismay. The only way to get to the core of that was immersing myself in that party and I didn’t doubt in doing so, once I came to the conclusion I had to. Whatever information I got that night, I would make it arrive to the organization and step into the darkness again.

The mansion where the party would take place was an enormous white building in the middle of London, with large corridors full of art and red carpets and halls with chandeliers and giant staircases. The ballroom was on the second floor, faintly illuminated and with an orchestra at the bottom that didn’t stop playing. It was the perfect place to discuss something turbid and not be suspicious, adding as well the secretiveness that the masks gave. For once, this last thing was making the mission harder for me.

I mixed myself among the crowd, obliging myself to accept dances and move all around. A group of girls had been following and talking to me soon after the party had started, asking me to dance one after the other. I was a little bit conflicted about dancing with them but, considering it allowed me to move around the place discretely, I agreed.

As I thought, dancing with another woman was making my whole body react badly, even if didn’t show it. To every fibre of my being, it felt wrong to have another hand on mine, to place another on a strange waist. Dancing with somebody who wasn’t Evey, didn’t feel right for me.

Nevertheless, I knew my only option was choking down the sensation. I had to focus. While I maintained the conversation with them as I danced, my senses were searching for clues around me. I was successful in keeping polite with my company and still search for the provider.

However, eventually, my eyes caught an image that erased all my thoughts and twisted my gravity, making me feel I was about to crumble. Smiling widely, with her arms wrapped around her lover’s neck and her eyes covered by a delicate white mask, there was an angel dancing in the middle of the ballroom.

Evey was there, held delicately by Eric Finch. For a moment, I thought my heart would crack and shatter into a million pieces, hit devilishly by the image. My stomach twisted, boiling up with sadness and, even if I despised it, envy. She had never smiled that way with me near. She had never laughed so openly as she did with Eric around. He had everything I dreamed of, everything I would never have. I couldn’t.

For a year, I had been able to live with that. I knew they were together and I convinced myself that I was glad she had someone who made her happy. A part of me was; the other, burned for the hopeless desire of being the object of her affections. There were a hundred reasons why that would be impossible, always. However, I couldn’t control completely how my mind moved some nights, how I wished to be someone else, to look and be different.

At that moment, my whole resilience seemed to break and my body broke with pain. Averting my eyes from them wasn’t enough. Trying to keep my mind cooled and focused on the reason that had taken me there, to that ballroom, that night, wasn’t enough. Excusing myself, promising to dance with her again after a while, I sheltered myself in a corner of the place.

I wasn’t breathing. My chest was hurting too much for any air to enter my lungs. My eyes were burning and it didn’t matter how hard I shut them. Everything in me was rioting and I felt I was losing control. I hadn’t been ready to witness such image that night. The truth was that I would never have been.

Most of the times I had seen them, they had been in a public place and the situation was not the moment for affection. I had seen a couple of brief kisses and a few hugs; nothing else. However, I had never seen that clear happiness in her eyes, or him being that openly affectionate with her. I had never seen them in a calmed moment, able to show their feelings. And it was destroying me.

I had to carry on with my mission and stop acting as if I was a scared and hurt little animal. I hadn’t witnessed anything I didn’t know or discovered something I wasn’t aware of. There was no place then for my pointless despairs. I was there for her safety and if I lost my focus the whole night would be in vain.

Looking around, I spotted her two friends of the rebel cell as well. The redheaded, Maria, was talking to a group of people near where I was. Bel, the brunette one, had approached Evey after Eric had gotten out of the room, taking her to one of the bars. If there was somebody of the opposition cell there, they weren’t safe in that place.

I had to warn them. However, there was no way to do so without approaching them directly, not if I wanted to do it quickly. I came up with an idea, although it took me a couple of minutes to gather the strength, reminding myself there was no time to lose. They had to get out of that celebration as soon as possible.

Advancing through the ballroom, with my throat tightening and my insides tingling with nerves, I searched for them with my gaze. When I spotted them talking near the entrance, I breathed in deeply, trying to ignore my crazed senses, and walked to them.

When I stood behind Maria and Bel, stopping, Evey, who was backed against the wall, fixed her eyes on me. She seemed extremely rigid, too quiet. However, she didn’t say a thing. She just stared at me, probably wondering about my presence. I dropped my gaze behind the mask, avoiding to look at her when a stabbing pain crossed my heart.

That whole situation was a punishment, clearly. She seemed an angel, indeed. The dress she was wearing was similar to a soft snowfall covering her skin. Her arms and chest were uncovered, a vertiginous neck reaching almost her navel. The skirt of the dress, attached to the opaque body, was made of a semi-transparent tulle decorated with delicate flowers, offering a clear look to her legs.

Maria and Bel turned around, both of their gazes full of surprise fixing on me. Trying to calm down, preparing my voice, I made a gentle reverence, driving my hand to a side instead of taking my hat off, realizing a second before doing so that it would be the exact same thing I did when I met Evey. I wanted to avoid at all costs that she recognized me.

“Mesdames,” I muttered, softening my voice, trying to change it enough, and I straightened up again, turning my head towards Bel, who was scrutinizing me. “Milady, may I steal you from your companions for a dance? If you please.”

The girl looked at Evey, turning to her, a silent question shinning on her features. Evey stared back at her, not moving a single muscle. Bel, before this, breathed in deeply, giving a couple of empty glasses to Maria, who seemed very lost all of a sudden, and turned to me completely.

“Sure,” Bel accepted, holding onto my arm.

I inhaled deeply, silently, when we immersed into the dancefloor. The plan of talking to Bel wasn’t a pleasure, considering she was clearly very protective of Evey and knew the horrors I put her through, but standing before Evey was being a pain I couldn’t stand.

When we were far enough from them, I sensed how she tightened her arm around mine, clearly trying to hurt me.

“What’s your problem?” She grunted furiously, not looking at me as we advanced through the people. “What the hell are you doing here?”

I furrowed. “Do you know who I am?”

“Of course I do!” She snapped. “Evey has recognized you right away.”

I clenched my teeth, displeased. However, that statement confused me greatly. I couldn’t understand how she had recognized me. She hadn’t been close enough to hear my voice and those clothes didn’t resemble at all to my usual ones. Anyhow, the idea of putting in danger my promise, even if accidentally, made me extremely nervous.

“If you give me a minute, I’ll explain,” I said, resigned.

I saw sideways how she furrowed in anger. I took her to the corner where I was a minute before and she faced me with a hard expression. She had very delicate features, a slim figure and was a head shorter than me, but her sincere despair for me made her seem a fierce little beast wrapped in a black fancy dress.

“She told you to get away from her,” she snapped right away. “What didn’t you understand of that?”

“I did,” I claimed sincerely. “I didn’t know she would be here. That’s not the reason for my presence. I’d never break my oath to her.”

“Sure you wouldn’t,” Bel spitted out with venom, a furious sarcasm hitting me. “Which is the reason then?”

I approached her, slightly, closing the distance to avoid talking too loud. “The opposition cell is planning an attack. One of the providers is here. I was trying to get more information and send it to your organization. I wasn’t sure you were aware of these plans and I’m certainly not comfortable with the idea of a massacre.”

Bel backed away a little on her defensive pose, crossing her arms and her eyes softening with understanding, processing the information. “We suspected something.”

“You shouldn’t be here. It’s extremely dangerous. You’re disarmed and could be recognized even with these theatrics,” I warned. “I’m not asking for trust, just for reasoning. You know this is not a good place to be at this moment.”

Bel looked away, crossing her arms over her chest, seeming deeply conflicted. Then, she sighed roughly, as if defeated, and stared at me with a little bit of wariness.

“How will you make the information arrive?” She asked resoundingly.

“How, it’s not relevant. But I will, without approaching her; this I can assure you.”

She examined me for a second and came closer, closing the distance until her face was close of my mask, her expression burning me as if made of flames was.

“I’ll accept this today,” she spat out, not masking her hate towards me at all. “But I don’t want to see you near her ever again and I won’t accept the excuse that’s been an accident. Stay away,” she almost grunted this, containing a strong fury behind her teeth. “And you better…”

She was interrupted by a melodious sound and looked down right away, cursing and making a face. She rose the skirt of her dress and I averted my eyes immediately. When I looked at her again, she had a mobile in her hands.

“Wait here,” she stated. “We’re not over.”

Bel turned around, walking away, immersing in the crowd, glueing the mobile to her ear, and I breathed out, not realizing until then I had been holding my breath. The reason for my intimidation wasn’t Bel per se, but her furious hate. If I had any doubt left that Evey hadn’t told her what I did, now it had vanished. I didn’t want to imagine the words Evey had used to describe those moments, considering the fury that had ignited inside her friend. My heart started to beat painfully at the revival of those months. Sometimes, when I was alone, I couldn’t help the echoing in my head of her screams while I tortured her, of the tears, of her looks full of blind hate. I could remember myself perfectly, peeling my costumes as soon as I get out of the fake prison after the sessions, almost ripping them off, stumbling as I walked, shedding tears and whimpering. I felt heinous and, even so, I didn’t stop. That decision, the one to keep making her suffer, was enough to make me realize how highly important was to stay truthful to my promise. I was a monster.

One of the girls I had danced with before returned, the blonde one, starting to talk to me joyfully. I was still struggling with my mind, unable to keep up much with the conversation. I needed to continue searching for the provider, although I didn’t feel strong enough to do so dancing with strangers, not now. I was trying to flee the situation as politely as I could when something caught my attention, keeping me still against that wall.

Evey appeared, walking fast towards us, grabbing the skirt of her dress and with bright sureness in her eyes. She stopped by our side and the blonde girl looked at her, furrowing slightly, annoyed. Evey glanced at her sideways for a millisecond, a little smirk curving her lips, and kept her gaze on me. My breath hitched, disappearing, and I sensed my heart hammering against my chest, spectacularly strong considering how broken it was.

“Sorry for making you wait. We can have this dance now,” Evey said to me, keeping a joyful tone.

A strong shiver ran through my whole body, alerting every one of my senses, but her words lowering my guard to the floor. My first assumption was that Bel had sent her instead.

Evey turned to the girl then, her smile growing a little. “Excuse me,” she said, although, considering her tone, she didn’t feel her words at all, “I think you’ll have to wait a little bit more.”

The girl opened her mouth to say something, seeming outraged. However, Evey had already approached me, passing her arm under mine, grabbing me and dragging me out of there. I followed, powerless, feeling my stomach twisting with nerves and my legs weak. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. I didn’t know what was the reason behind that sudden appearance and Bel sending her as a replacement seemed less probable as I thought about it more. I guessed that, maybe, she wanted to scream at me for breaking my oath or for interfering in her job. Anyhow, she shouldn’t be there.

She took me to the most private corner of the place, away from everybody else, and placed herself before me, giving me a strong look. I gulped, trying to breathe, failing. Evey approached more, grabbing my hand and raising the other one to my shoulder. When she did this, I felt her skin burning me through the layers that covered me, hurting my soul. One of the best moments of my life had been those brief minutes in which we danced during the Fifth. I never thought I would have another opportunity like that and my body seemed to be faster than my mind recognizing it. My other hand moved to her waist, gently. I tensed up, shivering, sensing how she gripped my hand slightly tighter at this. Her scent arrived at me, clouding my senses, and I thought I would die right there. Even if I was utterly confused, even if that was for her to scream at me… I couldn’t help be grateful, even if it was for that little brief second of her with me.

“I suspect you aren’t here for me, so you haven’t broken your promise. Don’t worry,” Evey said softly, staring directly into my eyes, as if she could see them. “This time the blame is on me for coming to you.”

The cloud in my mind vanished a little. I furrowed, examining her words carefully, trying to find the sense behind them. Evey let out a light sigh, staring the swaying of dancing, and I followed, still struggling with understanding why she was there.

“Where’s Bel?” She asked.

I tried to breathe. My lungs seemed absolutely constricted. “Out,” I got to say at last. “Somebody called her.”

“Why have you asked for her?” She furrowed, asking me with demand in her voice, although keeping her tone gentle. “Why are you here?”

“Rumours. I’m trying to get some information,” I said, finally able to utter a few more words without feeling I would choke on them.

“So,” she tilted her head a little, dropping her gaze for a moment, and looking at me with a little smirk, “you’re not here to flirt.” She stated, although it sounded more like a question.

My lungs rioted completely at her assumption, refusing to let any air come in, and I cleared my throat, trying to soothe it. Immediately, I felt the need to clear up that wasn’t my reason to be here. “Obviously, no.”

“Well, I don’t know how your mission is going,” Evey muttered, the smirk still covering her lips, her gaze shining playfully, “but clearly you’ve been around here stealing a few hearts.”

Her words made my body tense as if I had received a hard hit on my stomach and I almost bent over in pain. I wouldn’t have ever imagined that Evey implying such things could hurt so much. She was the only one for me. She would always be. But she couldn’t know. Should never know.

“I’ve told your friend everything your organization needs to know that doesn’t know already. You don’t have to replace her on this conversation,” I said, thinking work was what had to make her approach me. It couldn’t be another thing.

However, Evey furrowed sadly, her playfulness disappearing in a second. “Are you kicking me out?” She asked in a low voice, full of sorrow.

Before that, I sensed sudden dizziness, caused by the confusion attacking every cell of my being. “You made yourself clear the last time,” I explained, trying to make her understand my words. “If there is something that concerns the revolution, I’ll make it arrive to the organization without intervening in your path.”

Evey opened her mouth, sudden fight in her eyes, which disappeared in a second. I kept silent, looking at her without understanding a single thing.

“I’m not here for that. I needed to talk to you,” she said, at last, making a face, twisted with sadness. “About us.”

At her words, something in my brain seemed to stop. She had to realize, so she rapidly let out an explanation.

“I feel like you kept more to yourself than you said in our last conversation. And it’s been bothering me a lot.”

My sense of flight turned on inside me with furious intensity. She had noticed that. Nevertheless, what was making me feel on the edge was the unknown reason why she cared.

“I answered what you asked and disguised what you didn’t,” I simply said, considering that I could admit that, since she had realized anyway.

“Well, now I need to ask again,” she stated resoundingly, confident.

My heart wavered, hurt, and I, completely lost, I tried to keep collected before that demand.

“Why, Evey?” I breathed out, defeated. I didn’t understand why she was doing that, why it was necessary to revisit the events that had led us to my depart. “The past is locked now and I am there. Don’t unleash it if your desire is to move on.”

“You’ve lost your powers of observation if you really think you’re my past,” she answered back with a strong voice, her shoulders gathering some tension. “I can’t rip you off my chest. You’re within me forever. You made sure to do so, even if it wasn’t intended,” Evey explained resoundingly and a hint of desperation ringed in her tone, a bit of sweetness. “I just expressed a need, but it wasn’t my real desire to push you away. You forced me to do it with your actions.”

The bitter tone returned in those last words and I sensed my head spinning. I thought that maybe it was fair that I had to go through the hell that was being that night. She herself was telling me that, even if I disappeared, the consequences of what I did were still haunting her. A broken heart and a few minutes of rage was a very little punishment, considering what I truly deserved.

I raised my chin, averting my watery eyes from her expression, not being able to handle it. “If what you need is to reprimand me again…” I started, trying with all of me to keep my voice steady. “I’m open to it. But you asked me to say goodbye to you and I’ll stick to that demand. I won’t bring anything that isn’t good for you.”

She inhaled, and I heard the irritation in it perfectly. “How am I supposed to know if it’s good or bad something I haven’t heard yet?” She argued. “And how can you know? You don’t have a good record on doing things that you believe are good for me.”

I lowered my head again, needing more to examine her expression that avoiding it now. Something was clearly escaping me and I hoped to find a clue in her gaze. However, I just found determination, tainted with a hint of hopelessness. I couldn’t comprehend what she wanted, if it wasn’t screaming at me. Why did she want to dig more into that despair?

“You told me I was assuming your needs through the lens of my mind,” I said, confused. “But, as you’ve said, you expressed your needs for me to know. And I’m acting according to them.”

“But you won’t tell me anything now,” she furrowed slightly, annoyed.

“Because of this very reason, indeed.”

“And…” She hesitated, her eyes shining with a cryptic emotion. “What if my needs have changed?”

A shiver ran through me, giving me the sensation that a vertiginous swirl was opening under my feet, swallowing me slowly, trapping me. “Please, Evey…” I breathed out, needing for her to understand nothing she could possibly want to know would be good for her. Nothing I hadn’t told her yet would serve her in anything. I wouldn’t hurt her again. I refused.

“I didn’t say goodbye,” she stated, shutting me off, her grip on me tightening, closing more the distance between us.

My whole body tensed up at her closeness, my heart rioting and a bunch of butterflies dancing in my stomach. I started to breathe raggedly, examined by the sudden hope she was projecting, feeling a tingling sensation take over me.

“Is that what you need? To say it?” I whispered, realizing right away how my voice was breaking, and not minding at the moment.

Everything was so contradictory. Her words were war; in her expression, however, I just saw hope. With her, honestly, it always had been like that. She was the purest soul I had ever laid my eyes on. However, the closeness to the hell I was always made her take her weapons out to fight me. I despised she had gotten used to that dynamic. If only I could reborn truthfully, be another man…

“It might be that,” she admitted, with a tone full of desperation, holding my hand tighter. “But I don’t think I can. I could never.”

My heart was starting to hurt badly. She was saying things that, in another context, would have been my absolute Heaven. However, that strict meaning couldn’t be the one she meant now. She wanted me away. She was right. Something had taken her there and, whatever it was, my intelligence was failing me in the mission to understand it.

“What do you want from me?” I asked in a low tone.

Her lips parted slightly, her delicate brows furrowing, sudden pain reflecting on her features. Evey was quiet for a moment, a debate with herself clearly going on inside her head, hidden from me. In a way, I was glad for that silence. Even if I was breaking, I knew that that moment was probably the last time by her side, and I would be willing to shatter in a million pieces, turn into dust, if that meant a few more brief moments with her.

Finally, the confusion ended and confidence grew in her gaze again. “Let me ask you one single thing and I’ll go forever,” she asked.

I breathed in, my little trance while appreciating her presence vanishing. “I can’t promise an answer.”

“Let me try, at least.”

Feeling cornered, I could do nothing but nod. I wasn’t sure what she wanted to know, and I recalled our last conversation in search for something that gave me a clue, meanwhile, she seemed to gather courage.

“What do you feel for me right now?” She muttered.

Before I could process what she had asked, my mind had already blurted out a response, activating by instinct. “I can’t answer that,” I stated strongly.

Her eyes watered before my sudden resounding tone and it made me realize what had just happened. Panic hit my head at the sight and, witnessing how she clenched her jaw to avoid shedding those incipient tears, I felt even more confused.

“Why?” She whispered brokenly.

My chest tightened, weighting a tone all of a sudden. I had a stronger reason now to refuse to talk. Why did she want to know such a thing? I couldn’t understand. Nevertheless, it really wouldn’t be good for her to know. And, inside me, I knew that I couldn’t take that rejection. Not again.

“I’ve told you why,” I muttered, trying to soothe the moment.

Evey bit her lip, containing whatever was going on inside her, and the vision made me tremble. “And what if that’s what I need to move on?” She continued, not backing away even if there was sorrow in her pupils.

“I’m sure you’ll figure out another way,” I said.

“This is the only way,” Evey stated, now more confident, straightening up her posture a little.

Closing my eyes tight, I breathed in. Definitely, I would hate myself even more for what I was about to say. “I’m afraid I can’t help you then.”

She huffed. “You won’t,” Evey spitted out with venom in her voice. “That’s very different.”

“I can’t,” I said, opening my eyes once more to find, certainly, how she was getting mad again.

“It’d be just a few words and it’ll be over,” the hope appeared in her gaze again, although now it was soiled.

“If I say them, it won’t be,” I explained, swallowing down my own desperation. If I said I would always love her deeply, she would find me even more monstrous. Not even my love had stopped me from hurting her several times. Moreover, I promised her to stay away and admitting that would be approaching her in a way more powerful than coming closer physically. I couldn’t do that. Although, maybe, it was what she meant, what she was searching for. “I’ll summon a reaction I can’t take.”

“I’ll go whatever you say,” she insisted.

“I know that’s not true,” she would want to destroy me, for sure.

She let me go abruptly, startling me at such sudden movement. As she took a step back, I witnessed how her expression filled with shadows, how sharp suffering attacked her and tears gathered in her eyes until they flooded.

“Alright. Forget it,” she said, her voice shaking. “I won’t bother you anymore. I… I’ll go now.”

Evey started to walk away right away, practically running, disappearing among the crowd. I called her desperately, but she didn’t turn around. My legs were moving before I couldn’t even resonate a thing, chasing after her without hesitating. I got out of the ballroom and followed her in a rush, running down the staircase that took to the principal hall. Standing before Evey in the middle of the place, I stopped her, not daring to put my hands on her right then.

She turned her face to a side, tears streaming down her cheeks, so abundant that went even through the mask. My heart cracked more.

“This is following, you know?” She spat out viciously.

I allowed myself to forget my oath for a moment. “Maybe you’re right,” I admitted, my breath not totally stable. “Maybe my powers of observation are not at their best. But you have to understand my confusion: you told me to stay away for good and then you come to me. I tried to act by my resolution and it hurt you; I act now under yours, and it hurts you too.”

She crossed her arms over her chest, hugging herself, and her expression softened with sadness. I hated to be responsible for that emotion. I had tried with all of me to act right and even like that I had failed. Woefully, I was starting to see nothing I could do would heal what I had done to her. She would live eternally with those wounds and it was my fault alone.

“You’re not hurting me this time. I’m doing this to myself,” she said in a whisper, without looking at me. “It’s my thing to deal with. So… Just forget it.”

She advanced one step to walk past me, but I moved to stop her again by pure instinct. My heartbeats were deafening me, the start of a feeling shaking my core, a sudden assumption coming to my mind.

“I can’t answer you question but I… I can listen,” I said, sensing a hope I couldn’t classify exactly.

She turned her head to me at last, astonishment covering her face. “As much as you can’t answer my question, I can’t tell you this,” she stated, furrowing, and letting out a tired sigh, averting her eyes for a moment. “I… I’ve been drinking too much. I’m being incoherent,” she explained. “You… Just forget this has happened.”

I didn’t move. I didn’t say a thing. She gave me another brief look and walked away. The sound of her heels at my back alerted me, a strong part of me refusing to let the moment go, to cling onto that strange hope.

“I’ll exchange truth for a truth,” I blurted out without thinking much.

I turned around and I stared at her, still giving her back to me. Slowly, she turned to look at me. When I locked my gaze with hers, I saw a softness I hadn’t seen before, wholesome and powerful, that made my whole being start to shake. She breathed out, as if she wanted to say something, and my heart skipped a beat, hopeful.

The moment broke when an irritating sound got between us. She moved right away, realization hitting her, and rose the skirt of her dress, reaching a mobile attached to her thigh with a rubber band. She picked it up while I stared at her, feeling something die inside me. What was I hoping for? I was being unmindful.

“Eric?” She said.

Although very faintly, my ears captured the voice of the man at the other side. “You have to get out of there, right now,” he said with a shaking voice.

“What?” Evey asked, furrowing deeply.

“There’s a bomb in the building. Get out, now!” He told her, rushed, clearly scared.

She paled, although battle arose in her gaze and started to walk fast towards the staircase. I followed, silent. “Maria and thousands of people are inside, still! I won’t get out before…” Evey argued him, raising her voice in outrage.

“I don’t know how much time there’s left!” He stated, cutting her off, uttering a desperate plea. “Please, Evey…!”

“I can’t. I’ll be safe, promise. Bye,” she cut the call, ignoring what the man had asked her.

We had reached the middle of the way up when she unglued the phone of her ear. Knowing it was selfish and conflictive towards my oath, I reached her, raising her light body and carrying her. With Evey secure in my arms, I walked down, rushing to get out of the building. I knew she wouldn’t leave by her own and the thought of her being killed horrified me to the point of being untruthful to my promise. I wouldn’t let her be harmed. I couldn’t. I should have insisted her to leave right after she had appeared. Her presence had distracted me from the truth around us.

She stayed quiet at first. However, when we reached the hall again, she did, catching me totally off guard. Evey gave me an elbow in the middle of my chest, with a force that surprised me even more than the pain. Anyway, the hit was enough harmful to make me loosen my grip around her, giving her enough freedom to roll over and fall. Immediately, she stood up while I coughed, running away, up the stairs again.

Realizing I wouldn’t stop her, and knowing I hadn’t the right to do so, I decided to find the bomb myself. The only way to save her was that, the only way in which I was helpful then. My instinct drove me to the attic, where it was more probable to kill everybody in the ballroom with the explosion. Finding it wasn’t hard. An alternative little and claustrophobic staircase hidden behind one of the doors of the hall took me there directly. While I rushed up, I heard the alarms going on, people screaming and running out of the building.

Once in the attic, a familiar tic tac reached my eardrums immediately. The place was full of junk and dusty furniture, moved briefly after to make the bomb harder to reach, probably by more than a single person. However, it was easy for me to go through it. The ballroom was under the attic and I heard how everybody was already out.

The bomb was at the bottom, time already running down. I stared at it. It was enough to blow up the whole mansion and kill anyone who was inside, even if hidden in the most unreachable place. Even so, it was home-made, and not very well done. It was a surprise that it was working. Deactivate it wouldn’t be a hard mission. Moreover, the counter showed that I had twenty minutes still.

I was about to crouch down to put my hands on the bomb when I heard a woman scream in the ballroom, right under my feet. The scream wouldn’t have alerted me, if it wasn’t because that voice was Evey’s.

A sharp fear reached me. Standing up right away, I rushed out of the attic, throwing myself into the staircase, running down the lower floor, stumbling against the door that took me to the ballroom, covered by the water of the fire extinguishers.

Near one of the bars, I saw Evey, leant over, gasping. I rushed there, witnessing with horror how she fell on her knees. Throwing myself to the floor with her, I grabbed her by the arms, shaking with fear.

“Evey!” I gasped terrified.

“Take her out,” she asked roughly, her eyes closed tight and a huge pain reflected with clearness on her expression.

“What’s wrong?” I demanded brokenly.

“Take her out!” She just yelled, ignoring my question.

I heard a sob and wrestling behind the bar, making me avert my eyes from Evey. At the same time, I heard rushed steps and somebody entering the ballroom.

“Evey!” Bel screamed, rushing to her and kneeling to take her in her arms.

I stood up fast, reaching the bar and jumping over, finding her other friend, Maria, completely tied up and with a wound on her scalp, bleeding. I untied her wrists and ankles and I helped her stand up. I was about to demand an explanation, but she blurted it out before I could ask.

“The woman that knocked me down and tied me has injected something on her,” Maria sobbed, looking at Evey.

I noticed then a needle on the floor, right by our side, and I crouched down to grab it. I opened it, smelling, and the scent of a mix of drugs hit my nostrils.

I heard Evey mutter a sound full of pain and Bel placed a hand on her forehead. “You’re too warm,” Bel uttered, her voice shaking.

Panic took me suddenly and I throwed the needle away, jumping over the bar and approaching them. Bel turned her face, fixing a furious pair of blue eyes on me, wrapping her arms around Evey more protectively. I stopped.

“You’re not touching her,” she grunted.

“We have to take her to the nearest shelter,” I stated. There was no time for hate now.

“She needs a hospital.”

“Nobody can help her there,” I said, starting to get extremely anxious. “We’ll lose precious time of reaction if we get into this senseless quarrel. And we’ll be all dead soon if we don’t move.”

She was irritated, but the worry made her reason listen to me. I crouched down, taking Evey in my arms. She whimpered and my nerves increased. She was clearly suffering an overdose and if I didn’t act fast, I would lose her, this time forever.

“Guide me to the nearest of your shelters, quickly,” I asked, my voice starting to echo my nerves. “Please.”

Maria walked to us and grabbed Bel by the arm, gently, both sharing a look, a silent conversation that lasted a second. Then, Bel looked down and nodded.

“Follow me,” Maria said, softly, fear still shaking her words.

She started to ran and I did too. Bel chased us as well, keeping behind me all the way. While we ran through the alleys and even if in less than five minutes we were already running through an abandoned emergency hall of the sewers, about to reach the door of the shelter, the nervousness was eating me whole. Evey was more silent as the time passed and I sensed how the heat of her body was lowering.

We ended up in the little hall of what seemed a very old building. Maria took me to the last floor, where she opened one of the doors and gave me access to a little room. I left Evey on the bed right away, gasping, and I rushed to take her mask off and touch her neck. The pulse was very faint.

I tried to keep cooled down, but I was deeply frightened. I straightened up, walking towards the girls, both seeming openly scared.

“Take me to wherever you keep the medicines,” I asked.

“Do you know what you are doing?” Bel blurted out, wary.

“Yes. I know some things about chemicals,” I assured, impatient. I couldn’t lose a single second.

“Fine,” she muttered, getting out of the room.

I followed, rushed. Maria threw at her a set of keys and said that she would distract the ones that were guarding the last floor with something, making them move from their position to clear the way.

When we reached the floor underground, there was nobody guarding the door, as Maria assured. I practically stumbled against when she opened, walking past Bel, finding myself in a huge infirmary.

Frantically, I searched through the cupboards full of medicines, trying to find the ones I needed. I was trying to be as fast as possible, but as fast as I tried to be, more I thought I was being very slow. My whole body was shaking. My breath came out in ragged gasps and I couldn’t put my thoughts in order. Saving Evey, it was the only thing that echoed in my head. For a moment, I forgot what I was trying to do with all that. Suddenly, my mind was blank.

I closed my eyes, trying to breathe, praying for a bit of light, a bit of calmness. Remembering what and how I wanted to combinate the medicines, I started to prepare the mix in a little jar. When I tried to get the liquid inside the needle, my hands were trembling so much it took me a few attempts to get it. I had to stop myself again, breathe, and tense my arms to keep my pulse steady enough. I had no time to repeat the mix and I had lost enough time thanks to my nervousness.

When I got it in, I turned towards the door right away, running back to the room without almost realizing Bel was still there. She followed me, although I practically left her behind. Once in the room again, I sat beside Evey on the bed. She was so pale, barely moving, completely motionless… I would have thought the worse if it wasn’t because I was seeing her chest moving with faint breathing.

“V…” She whispered in the lowest voice, my name sounding like a plea.

“Don’t talk, Evey,” I demanded, bending over and sucking the needle on her arm, gently, pressing the top and injecting the liquid.

“I’m so cold, V… I’m sorry…” She breathed out sadly.

Bel entered the room then, closing the door behind her and backing on it, gasping.

I took out the needle, shivering at her voice, seeming as if she was underwater. “Please, don’t talk,” I asked.

“V… Hold me, please… Please…” Evey pleaded brokenly, tears streaming from her eyes.

Bel uttered a sob and I had to clench my jaw painfully to contain mine too, although I couldn’t help the tears. My mind, starting to get in a swirl of denial, pushed me to accept. I grabbed Evey gently, raising her and placing her over my lap, held by my arms. She was very cold indeed and my heart shrunk with fear. I held her tighter against me, hoping my warmth could be helpful. This couldn’t happen. I refused to let it happen.

“I’m sorry… I can’t stay…” She muttered.

“No,” I stated resoundingly, shaking my head, caressing her cheek and her hair with my hand. “You’ll be fine.”

“I won’t…” Evey denied, her tone fainter now, her skin paler. “I’m not here anymore…”

The tears blurred my vision and I could barely breathe. This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t be.

Inside me, I uttered a desperate plea, a cry for help, not minding if it came from Heaven or Hell. I would have sold my soul to the Devil, given my life for her. But I was aware that my soul didn’t worth that much, couldn’t pay the price for her salvation. This was my punishment. I was being punished. But why at the cost of her life? Why?

Evey opened her eyes, just a little, looking at me with dull eyes. And she smiled, brokenly, but with a joy that made my tears grew.

“V…” She whispered, happily even if her life was fading away.

“Evey…” I muttered brokenly. I had failed. I had been too slow. I had taken her to death. “Fight, please… You have to live,” I begged, caressing her cheek with my thumb.

“Sorry… I’m so sorry… I pushed you away…” She whimpered, her joy disappearing, raw sadness filling her features.

I bent down, shaken with a destructive pain at her words, almost reaching her face with my mask. She was feeling sorry for me, in that very moment, for something I did, for being the one that hurt her. I was wrong: I was already in Hell.

“Don’t be. But, please, I beg you… Don’t leave…” I asked, pleaded, my voice almost breaking in a sob.

“I don’t care…About all… I…” She closed her eyes, more tears falling, and I sensed how her strength faded more.

“Stop talking, Evey… Stop,” I cried out openly, holding her closer. _‘Please, God… Don’t do this to her. Take me instead. Don’t let her die’_ , I thought, pleading desperately.

She furrowed, sorrow tracing the lines of her expression. “Don’t tell me… What to do… Stupid…”

I sobbed, wrapping her tighter against me, barely feeling her there. That was my fault. Those were the consequences of my acts. I deserved it. I deserved it all.

“I love you, V…” I heard her whisper faintly. “I’ve always loved y…”

Her breathing stopped; her heart as well; her body, suddenly, was completely limp in my arms. And, with it, I sensed my heart stopping too.

Maybe I deserved it. But she didn’t. She didn’t, for the love of God.

“Get out of the room!” I yelled to Bel, standing up with Evey in my arms, leaving her on the wooden floor.

“Wh…” she stuttered, drowned in tears.

“Get out, please!” I snapped my head up, giving her a desperate glance that she couldn’t even see.

She didn’t move, scared, shocked, and I hadn’t time to be taken by shame. I couldn’t let a single more second pass. I would save her, whatever it took me, but I would. Evey wouldn’t die, meanwhile I had my life to give instead.

I ripped my mask off, my gloves as well, throwing them away and bent over Evey, my hands on her chest. I started to give her heart compressions, counting in my head to thirty, fear and denial giving me a brief moment of focus.

Gasping, I followed the next step, opening her mouth and pinching her nose. I felt my stomach twisting. “God… Forgive me…” I whispered. I would hate myself deeply for that, although later. Not now.

I gave her my breath, a couple of times, and returned to the compressions. I repeated the circle two times and the desperation started to take over me. “Come on, Evey…” I grunted. “Come back…”

She wasn’t responding. It wasn’t working, but I didn’t stop. I didn’t stop, didn’t hesitate. “Come on!” I gasped, roughly, staring at her, lifeless, through my tears.

When I leaned over to join my mouth with hers again, she breathed in suddenly, roughly. I let out a cry of joy, cupping her face, hearing her heart resuming its beating, even if faintly. She started to breathe again, slowly, still unconscious.

“Thank God,” I cried out, barely seeing her through my tears. “You’re alright… You’ll be alright…”

I reached my mask, tying it clumsily, still trembling exaggeratedly, and put my gloves on. I put Evey on the bed again, not taking a hand of her neck to be sure her pulse was stable. I turned to Bel, who was staring at us, shocked, immobile.

“I need you to take some things here, as fast as you can,” I asked her, swallowing down, trying to clear and stabilize my voice.

“What?” She breathed out, barely.

“Cotton, disinfectant, an intravenous drip with serum and electrocardiogram monitor. And gloves, please.”

She nodded, getting out of the room, walking strangely, her legs probably trembling. Once alone, I kept myself focused on Evey, who was slowly getting back a bit of colour on her cheeks. I sighed, relieved, not being able to help to cry silently, feeling a mix of emotions that made my tears continue falling.

I caressed her face, pushing aside the curls that had stuck to her face due to sweat and water. Her hair and dress were still wet and that couldn’t be good for her to warm up. When Bel returned, I asked her to change Evey and once she was in dry clothes, I held her in my arms while Bel changed the sheets and turned the mattress around to leave the dry side up. I put her under the sheets and connected her to the electrocardiogram, as well as the intravenous drip on her other arm. Then, I just stayed by her side, making sure she was recovering, that her body didn’t riot again. I asked for a towel, to dry her hair as much as I could. Doing that, taking care of her, kept me calm.

Bel stayed by the bed, sitting on a chair. Maria returned after a while, unaware of the hell we had just lived, and said she had warned Jeremy. I knew he was the other head of the shelters; I had seen him a few times, when they went on night missions.

A few hours had passed when Evey suffered an attack of retching, but didn’t wake up completely every time she vomited. After the first one, we had prepared a bucket near the bed ready for when it happened.

It was almost the next evening when I felt enough strength to leave the spot by her side, standing up, giving her one last caress on her already dry hair. Bel looked at me, with bags under her eyes.

“I shall go now,” I said in a whisper.

“What?” She muttered. “Before she wakes up?”

“It’s the best. I won’t break my promise more,” I explained, feeling my heart heavy. “I’ve stayed because I wanted to be sure she would be alright. And she would be, from now on. I’m sure. When she wakes up, make her drink a lot of liquids.”

I approached a disorganized table that was under the window and grabbed a piece of paper and a pen. I wrote the number and place I needed her to know and approached Bel, giving her the note.

“I’d be grateful if you informed me of her state for for the next couple of days. Leave the notes in this letterbox.”

“Okay,” she whispered.

“Goodbye,” I said, glancing at Evey for a moment before reaching the door.

“Bye,” Bel answered, faintly.

I opened it, getting out of the room, closing it behind me without producing a sound. Then, I walked out of the building, directly into the loneliness of my existence again.

I was there again: closed between four grey, obscure walls, laying on the hard floor, hearing horrid screams in the distance. There was barely any light, just a brief ray entering by the slit behind the door in front of me, and my body felt stiff and resented due to an inexplicable pain.

Where or who I was were questions I couldn’t stop asking myself. I couldn’t remember a single thing. Some things, although, were clear to me. I could formulate words through the confusion in my mind, remember how the floor and the door were called, what I was… I could discern feelings and sensations and put a name on them. I could talk and move, breathe and gasp. Even so, whatever that had happened before that moment, had totally vanished from my head.

_Why was I there again?_

I examined myself, all I could under that faint light. A man. I was a man. Tall and muscular. My skin was dirty and there were wounds and bruises all over it. However, it was pale. I touched my face and skull, noticing a raspy sensation when doing so. I barely had hair and, for some reason, I knew that was not right.

Trembling, I stayed curled on a corner, attacked by the confusion and the horridness of somebody shouting, never stopping. All my senses warned me that I was in danger; the reason, even so, kept occult for a few hours.

When the door opened, a pair of men grabbed me, dragging me out to a room where they chained me to a wall, ripping the piece of clothing that barely covered my body, leaving me there, immobilised, naked. A blonde woman appeared soon after, accompanied with a group of persons in lab coats and two with a pair of large instruments.

She started to ask me things about myself for a while. I didn’t know any answer. I gave what I had: nothing; and I tried to get some answers. I had the hope to be unchained before she backed away and the two men with those instruments turned them on, a rush of gelid water colliding against my body, immersing me in deep pain.

_Why wasn’t I doing something? Why was I letting them do this to me again?_

After finding myself trapped constantly in that swirl of torture, fear and loneliness, I started to understand things. Whoever they were, they were testing me. The torture sessions never came alone, always complemented with injections and blood extractions. And I know I wasn’t the only one. The screams I constantly heard and the movement behind the door of my cell belonged to the other persons trapped there.

At some point, I stopped jumping every time I heard something at the other side, steps that approached, fearing they were coming for me again. I had stopped caring about the constant pain. I just wished it ended soon. I wished to never wake up again or perish in one of the sessions.

_Stop._

The voices were less and less as the time passed, some dying sooner than others. New voices arrived then; I could hear them very clearly, recognize them when they screamed, starting to learn when the shouts meant that I was the next one dragged into the sessions.

Eventually, the voices disappeared, substituted with a cold silence that filled the hours and made me lose orientation of the torture routines. In that silence, my mind felt even emptier. I repeated constantly the names and faces of those who I had noticed were in charge of that place: Delia Surridge, Lewis Prothero, Liliban… While drowning in that sea of hopelessness, the choking sensation in my chest was the only thing that kept me feeling I was physically there.

_I wanted to get out._

Just clarity seemed to arrive to me when Valerie handed me, through the wall that separated our cells, the first part of her life, written in a piece of paper. Her words put me in place, showed me what all that was about, and gave me the strength to not give up, strength to get free.

At that point, I knew I was the last one, the only one successful of their experiments. The tortures were over, although, what replaced them, was even worse. They were testing me in all the ways they seemed to come up with. One day I could be immersed in a box full of cold water and ice until almost drowning; the other, I could be forced to escape from a group of famished, ravished dogs at the backyard. However, I complied. I didn’t scream. I didn’t plead. I just waited.

_Was that a punishment?_

My passiveness made them lower their guard and let me work at the garden for a while every day and, every day, I returned to my cell with my fists full of fertiliser. Little by little, I had been gathering what I needed. One night, after being able to get mustard gas, I knew it was time.

At night, I prepared the bomb on the floor, creating patterns with the fertiliser. With Valerie’s letter tightly protected in one of my fists, I breathed in, sensing the tingling sensation of near freedom in my stomach, ready to detonate the bomb. There was a chance that I ended up dying or getting too injured to escape, but I didn’t care. The possibility of getting out of there was the only thing that mattered, aside from blowing up that damned place and everyone inside, if there was luck.

Crouching down next to the door, I ignited the bomb. The seconds after that moment, the only thing I sensed was the pain. A hard collision, fire on my body, creeping. The harm of the flames devouring my skin clouded all around me for an instant, the smell of it burning, mixing with the dusty rubble ignited around me. Then, I dragged myself, getting up slowly, getting through the pain, trying to find a way out.

A hole in a wall gave me an exit to the outside. I saw Delia. I saw some that had survived, but at that moment I couldn’t care about that. The turbulent air of the night caressed me, contrasting with the fire at my back, and I felt it, at last: freedom. Raising my arms, I shouted, relying on it, breathing it in.

_It didn’t hurt so much in comparison._

I walked out of the facility, getting into the woods. The cold rush didn’t take long to mix with my burned to skin to act. Trembling strongly, I continued walking until I thought I was far enough, trying to overcome the pain that I felt at every step, every slight movement I made. When my sight was blackening and I sensed my body was about to stop functioning, I hid under a wild bush, curling under it.

For two days, I remained there, not even being able to stand up. The slight simplicity of breathing was enough to make me feel a pain that seemed to crush me against the moisty floor more. At the third break of dawn, I had enough energy to stand and continue walking. I arrived at a house near the end of the woods, which seemed temporarily inhabited, but in a good state. Breaking in, I found some clothes for myself and had my first contact with answers through a computer and a few old newspapers there.

It didn’t take much for me to understand what I had been through exactly and the first thought of getting revenge appeared. Nevertheless, to do that, I needed to get ready. And, by then, I was just a burned man with nothing but fury to answer back. My first thought was that I needed somewhere to stay, more permanent, where I could prepare myself.

_Where is she?_

I walked to London when the night fell and hid underground as soon as I arrived, knowing I couldn’t wander around with the aspect I had now. If somebody was searching me, or anybody saw me, simply, it would be too obvious who I was. Although, I didn’t have an answer to that myself. I had no name except the one they gave me, the number of my cell.

Soon after, I ended up in an abandoned station underground, that drove me to a completely deserted line. For a while, I investigated the zone, finding a building that had an immense underground floor, probably part of the whole complex. There, I decided to live.

_It wasn’t living. Why did I think I was?_

The next twenty years were filled with constant preparation, learning and patience, and covered the downtime with things I enjoyed. But, at last, it was the time to begin.

Tying the straps of the mask behind my head, putting it on, I examined the face I would adopt, the face of the idea I pursued.

However, then, somebody appeared behind me, untying it and keeping it away from me. I jumped, startled, turning around. The Gallery faded away and I found myself in a field of roses.

_She was there. God, thanks. She was there._

Evey looked at me fondly, with her bright hazel eyes shining, and smiled. She had my mask in her hand and rose it, staring at it for a moment. Then, he threw it behind her. She had her white dress on, seeming an angel.

“You don’t need it anymore,” she said, joyful. “I see you now.”

Before I could flinch away, realizing nothing covered me, she approached, interlacing our hands. I looked down, surprised, and noticed my skin was undamaged again: no burns or scars or wreckage. She cupped my face with her palms and smiled widely, standing on her tiptoes, placing a soft kiss on my lips.

“It’s over, V,” Evey whispered, backing away an inch, staring into my eyes. “I’m here,” she rose her fingers to my hair, caressing it. I closed my eyes. “Don’t be afraid.”

I hugged her, bending over. She was so light in my arms. “I’m not.”

“Yes, you are,” Evey whispered, hugging me. “Give in.”

“What?”

“You want to give in. So, give in.”

“Give into what?”

She backed away, smiling. “Into everything. You’ll know.”

“I don’t understand.”

“ _We know what we are, but know not what we may be_.”

I woke up with a gasp, trembling slightly, finding the white ceiling of my room over me. Letting out a deep sigh, I reclined over the bed, placing a hand on my forehead. I hadn’t dreamed of my first memories for two years now. It wasn’t a pleasing way to spend my brief time sleeping. However, I never knew when it would happen again. They never bothered me much, but my mood hadn’t been the best lately. Maybe that was what triggered it.

Nevertheless, what unsettled me more what the last part, the one that my yearning mind had made up. I didn’t understand why my own self, the unconscious one, wanted to torture me that way. Hadn’t had enough pain my time awake, being I fully aware that I desired too many impossible things? Normal skin. A kiss. How stupid I felt.

I made the bed and walked to the bathroom, needing a bit of water to soothe my creeping nerves. I took my pyjama off, leaving it in a basket, and got into the shower.

It had passed a month from New Year’s Eve. Thankfully, Bel obliged with my wish to notify me about Evey’s health and recovery. She had been alright, which made me stay calm enough to keep my promise strong, to keep my feet inside the Gallery. However, even if she was in good health, I suspected her feelings hadn’t kept untouched. I had known that Erich Finch had died in the mission of finding the bomb of the mansion, along with the crew he headed. Strange he was there, considering he wasn’t in charge of that kind of missions. Maybe he thought that Evey was still there, considering she had been so ambiguous in her intentions. I hoped she didn’t think of that possibility. My heart shattered just to think of the grieving she had to be going through. In the end, he was her partner. I would have liked to deactivate the bomb, although I couldn’t feel completely bad for choosing her before it. I just hoped life returned happiness to her, sooner than later.

On the other hand, I was debating constantly on what I had ahead. Which was my destiny? Which my mission? I was there still. I didn’t know why. To continue suffering, maybe? It was what seemed more likely. I was doing a good job in torturing myself, if I had to be honest.

Evey’s last words were echoing in my mind constantly, having taken over of my body and soul as if they were poison. Not that I thought they were completely true. Evey was completely out of her mind, dying and under the effects of chemicals. She could be thinking I was Finch or just saying things without much sense. I didn’t know. The case was that, even if they hadn’t a strong meaning, they tortured me. What a liar I would be if I said I hadn’t imagined that a thousand of times, of her saying them with true feelings. What a liar, if I denied I didn’t wish to be hugged and kissed. However, what I was, was a completely mad man. And that was undeniable.

I got out of the shower, grabbing a towel and drying my skin. I put lotion on it, feeling the dryness disappear; at least, it would for a while. Even if I hated it, I stood before the mirror over the sink, staring into my own blue gaze.

I breathed in, staring at the scars, the redness and pale bits that remained. I could remember the only time I had seen myself before the fire, in a mirror, after a session when they were returning me to that cell. I was very young, probably still a teenager. I was handsome; at least, I was before I was shaved, tortured and starved. My features had been soft, angular, masculine but not aggressive. I wasn’t much corpulent, although I was already tall.

However, that wasn’t me anymore and I had to remind myself again that that scarred, horrid being on the mirror was me. I couldn’t be hugged. I couldn’t be kissed. I doubted I could be loved, in any way. I hated it, but that was the monster I was. I didn’t mind to be, until I met her, until she screamed at me the hurtful truth. I was sick. Evil. Monstrous.

My eyes started to water due to impotence and I decided to step away from my reflection, returning to my room. Once there, I heard a distant sound: the Wurlitzer. I recognized the song, the sweet voice of Etta Jones signing If I Had You caressing my ears.

I dressed up fast, putting on my whole theatrics, carried by the impossibility of the assumptions my mind made up quickly. When I got out of my room, I advanced slowly, my throat tightening and my heart going crazy.

When I arrived at the living room, I stopped breathing, the sight of an angel leaning over the Wurlitzer freezing my body. Evey straightened up, turning around, and smiled at me, wearing the same white dress from New Year’s Eve.

My heart stopped.

I had to be dreaming still.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay!
> 
> I got a bit of inspiration to continue this. It's been really fun to get back to these moments in the story from V's POV, considering the place where he is in Veritas Vincit now. I'm excited to explore his side, honestly, even if it's very angsty. I hope y'all like it! <3 And I hope to have the next chapter sooner.
> 
> You can find the playlist for these Series here:[Evey's Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3Ul5sOjU0TKuQCAkKXHzeS?si=aX08S8aJRqOyXRhszGJ10g) and [V's Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1VjVNFmfETIpehoTINYsfD?si=tm0JDqvIR9ysfZcIBi3I6w). Also, you can find me on [Tumblr](https://nuryrune.tumblr.com/)! 
> 
> See you soon! <3 Stay safe!


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